There is so much potential hidden in matter. Echoes of structure and space.
So much winter to love. Stars. Needles. Ferns. Firs.
In frozen night, the breath of our farm’s springwater creek conjures crystalline ferns and fir trees, coating hardened snow. Needlelike stars
line the icy tracks of the car, the lug -shaped depressions of my boots,
the teardrop-shaped hoofprints of the deer that live here among us. Hoarfrost coats the bronze-colored stems of grasses and goldenrods, covers the willow’s branches with miniature ice-conifers. From their perfectly-pointed peaks to miniature lower limbs, icy triangular trees arise, flattened, as if shadows could be lithified to crystal.
Branching shapes of trees form over and over, dedritic,
like the rivers, like the branching of arteries and veins,
the efficient way to move fluid. Why then, I wonder,
does hoarfrost—frozen water—build branches; echo the waters
—and the rivers inside us?
So much potential lies hidden
in matter. Echoes of structure and space. Lattice work in liquid.
Winter brings no efficiency; only poetry. But now, fewer snows.
I never want to give up what I love.
Winter sunlight shining into a clear, new day; snow,
Ice crystals—but they will dissolve, vanishing into a kind of steam
as if dream memory, or mirage. Feathered firn will melt
and drip into creek, then speed away downstream.
So much potential lies hidden in matter. Echoes of structure and space. Lattice work in liquid. I still yearn for winter’s deep return
with snow and ice through the whole season.
Firn needles. Stars. Firs. Ferns.
—
Catherine Young, a disabled writer and performing artist, is author of the environmental memoir Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored by Coal and the ecopoetry collection Geosmin. Her prose and poetry are published in anthologies and literary journals internationally and nationally. She worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother. She loves meandering streams and deeply believes in the use of story for transforming the world. Find her Landward podcasts and writings at: www.catherineyoungwriter.com
