AND RISING

A warm January, indeed, but didn't February make sure we remembered? Feet of winter coming all in a day's time. Drifts settled high on the cold side of the pane, casting out the best of our sun. We crept in and out of doorways, our hunched frames braced for What Must Come Down. We raked! We did. But those godforsaken ice dams are keen to thrive, thick and heavy at the front door, drip drip dripping at the back. I took to borrowing Craig's overalls, finding myself in them backwards but already booted and too exhausted by the snow I hadn't yet waded through to even considering righting them. Near thirty inches found it's way to our ground and as it came I spoke to friends who had yet to fully dig out to their animals by midday. Ooo hasn't it felt foolish at times to have tethered ourselves to this old I'm-returning-to-the-earth-and-you're-coming-with-me house? If it ever comes up again, let us say we threw it all down for wicked, wicked days like these and the promise of winter chores in slippered feet laid up as offering from that bless-ed attached barn.

In between storms and early, early in the morning, our postman called - head on in, chicks are here. Chicks in February! Certainly the move of a woman Warm Enough in a thawed out sort of January (or, to be fair, the move of a woman wanting eggs Before Fall). But now I look at that deep, deep snow and those tiny, tiny but growing, growing chicks, both thinking they need this hill of earth to survive. We all know who'll cry uncle and recede, but don't I wonder at what point that'll be.

#FOLKSTEAD