The room is warm, and I remember with something approaching pleasure those brief pinprick bursts of the sky's icy chill the rain lately brought my face, and the sliding sheets of water my footsteps broke as I crossed the flooded drive, and the old storm-summoned songs that coursed through my mind like rivulets gathering seaward. Now, gusted raindrops drum the window, and the pines are singing like surf. But I've long since dried, and in such comfort may delight to hear the muted fury, and watch wispy steam swirl across my fresh coffee.
My dreaming cat chews a dream snack, which makes her whiskers flick. She's the picture of contentment. I must be the picture of resignation to the season. I'm finally ready to welcome this winter, if not with open arms then at least without resentment. It won't last forever, after all, and so I raise my cup to winter. Here's your mud in my eye! I'll soon be drunk with you, old friend, old foe.
Sunday Verse
Shirt
by Carl Sandburg
I REMEMBER once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in
the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and the picture of you
shivered and slid on top of the stuff.
And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the singing voice of a
careless humming woman.
One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a bonfire flickering red
embers, in a language its own talking to a spread of white stars:
It was you that slunk laughing
in the clumsy staggering shadows.
Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are alive with a peering
phantom face behind a doorway somewhere in the city’s push and fury
Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence under a twist of
oaken arms ready as ever to run away again when I tag the fluttering
shirt of you.