March Blizzard

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


It’s very early on Sunday morning, and I am trying to write a poem about what C. S. Lewis called “the daytime demons that strike at dawn.” [1] Now it’s dawn, which is later than it used to be because of DST, and I looked out the front windows. That was a mistake. The demons were there. After several days of melting, revealing several large areas of real earth, we have snow again. So it’s not just the dawn-striiking demons after me. It looks like the noonday demon, acedia, [2] has arrived early, so I’ll work on that poem another time. Right now, though, I’m turning to John Tagliabue for inspiration to get me going again.

March Blizzard [3]

A thin and crippled and sweet and humorous
very old man, dying on his winter bed,
in an oxygen tent, very very thin, Irish,
such a good Yankee craftsman, ascetic,
bachelor, dreamy philosophic, a few weeks ago
he climbed a thin ladder to take some snow
some ice off the roof, boyish up there he worked,
clear, now in the painted hospital he tries
to breathe, the whole day is dim
with heavy snow, it is still snowing, a dying
whale in the vast sea comes up several times
for air, what angels are ready?

And then
fooling all the predictions of doctors and charts
and tremulous fears of his brother and sisters
they adore him, and one had a permanent-wave
just to be ready in case]—and then he came out
of the hospital, went down to the grocery store
to see some friends, and recently
he’s been on
the roof again!

***

1] I may not have that phrase quite right, so if Bill White [The Rev. Dr. William Luther White, who wrote The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, which is available in a new edition] or some other Lewis scholar can correct me, I’d appreciate it. Helen and I once had the joy of eating lunch with Bill and Ann at The Eagle and Child in Oxford, where Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein used to lunch and chat about what they were writing. Bill ate there often while doing his Lewis research. We insiders call the place The Bird and Baby. {Yes, you call yourself an insider after one occasion if you don’t embarrass easily.}

2] Latin for absence of caring. The noonday demon has the noon to three shift, corresponding with the darkness over the earth during the crucifixion of Jesus.

3] Page 323, Good Poems, Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor [Penguin Books, 2002]

JRMcF

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)