Ghosts of First Snows Past

Today was the reception in memory of Brad. When I came outside from the church to go home, it was spitting snow, the first of the season. The Japanese have a term for first snow – hatsuyuki. It is considered a quiet and holy event. The snow did not stick but the snowflakes swirled wonderfully.  This is for Fireblossom’s prompt at Sunday Muse BlogSpot.  She explains that southerners have a tradition of bottle trees.  We had one when I was growing up.  I have one now, bottles from that old tree and from a private collection. A friend in Beaufort, NC has one of the old homes.  When they excavated their basement, they dug up thousands of opium bottles.  It seems the original mistress of the house was an opium addict and buried the bottles rather than have her secret come out.  My friend took the bottles to the Duke lab nearby and had them irradiated (she worked there).  The older bottles turned a deep purple, the newer bottles a pale aquamarine.

Ghosts of First Snows Past
“All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate…
Snow…unceasing snow”
― Hashin, Japanese Haiku

the temperature dropped from 56 degrees
to 25 in a couple of hours.
the first snow began to fall,
swirling like tiny white butterflies.
the bottles hanging on my crepe myrtle
hung perfectly still.
bottles of purple, blue, aquamarine, clear.
some were new and some were
perilously old –
two hundred or more years old.
they hadn’t done much trapping of spirits
but they sparkled gloriously in the sun,
shivered in the rain,
slept through the snow.
I walked from the car to the bottle tree
and touched some of them gently.
I thought about you and the first snow.
I remembered our first snow together.
It came in the night as we lay
together under my old quilt.
I felt it in my dreams
and I went to the window.
I awakened you and we stood with our arms
wrapped around each other,
watching the snow.
I touch the empty bottles and wonder –
are we caught in one of them,
held together for all time?

Love

I chose option 1  for Mish’s prompt – a book that is physically close to me and that means a lot to me – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
A short not-quite poem.

Love
“ ‘You’ll stay with me?’
Until the very end,’ said James.”
― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I will stay with you,
Until the very end.
I held him until he took his last breath –
my beloved husband whom I love until the end of time.

Days Pass

For Carrie’s Sunday Muse BlogSpot.

Days Pass

The red of sunrise, the blue of the sky all remind me that you are gone.

Wolf Moon

An American Sentence for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub.

 

Wolf Moon
“As different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Beneath the full Wolf Moon, the frozen earth sleeps in its soft argent light.

The End

A haibun for DVerse Poets Pub. It is about new beginnings. I am ending the haibun with an American Sentence instead of a classic haiku.

The End
“Grief is like living two lives – One is like pretending everything is alright, and the other where your heart silently screams in pain.” Anonymous

December 22 my husband died unexpectedly. He had been in the hospital for a few days but then, he died. I sat and held him untl he drew his last breath. Christmas did not exist this year. The New Year’s did not exist. Nothing exists except the deep pain. I walk around the empty house and look out of the windows. The beginning of the year dawns grey and rainy. I curl up in Brad’s recliner wrapped in the blanket. I don’t think I will ever get warm again. Half of my heart has died.
I look up from the depths of a mine, a caged canary beating my wings against cold death.

The Mine

The words. I did not use all of them. solitude, cage, moonless, identical, circle, gravity, canary, root, platitude, apparition

For Skylover’s Word List.

The Mine
“Grief is like living two lives – One is like pretending everything is alright, and the other where your heart silently screams in pain.” Anonymous

January 3.
the smell of petrichor rises
from the roots and
moist air circles me
in the moonless night.
solitude cages me.
an owl drifts across the sky
like an apparition.
I look up from the depths of a mine,
a caged canary beating my wings
against death.

Keeping Calm

For Sherry’s Prompt at Real Toads, keeping calm during the crisis of climate change.

Haibun: Keeping Calm
“The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you left behind want to stop living.” ― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry

Uh oh. Another one of Toni’s let’s get real and honest posts. With topics such as Trump, BREXIT, climate change – I find it hard to take any of it seriously. My husband died Sunday, suddenly, after a brief illness. I find it hard to keep calm in the face of a personal crisis. I don’t really care about a global crisis at this point. The love of my life died Sunday – a tall tree in a forest of fakes cut down in his prime. During his brief illness, I discovered again that the only thing that lasts forever is love. True honest unpretentious real love. One day I will care about the climate again. One day. Maybe it will be too late by the time I care again. Until then, I will wander through this empty house, stare at the Ursids by myself, look at the bare trees by myself. Love. That is it. The end-all and be-all. Love.
a tree cut down in its prime –
my heart grieves
my heart weeps