The Long White Season

There is more winter here,
the place you chose to start again.
Winter starts early. Stays late.

You had no way of knowing
how your Southern blood
would bear the winter,

no way of knowing
that you would come to love the snow
and the colorless landscapes;

no way of knowing it would be here
in the greyest state of the union
that you would discover color

and reclaim the parts of you lost
or stolen, or worse given away
to darknesses you were not allowed to see.

Life is simpler here.
At least it seems that way to me.
It may be the place. It may be me.

There is more rawness. Less pretending.
Winters are both Currier and Ives
and bitter. Hard.

It has become a good place to bloom.
No longer half this and half that.
Simple weather suits my simple soul.

I stop more often. And look.
I appreciate the stillness of snow.
Small towns in winter

are easier to traverse.
Someone is always there
to dig you out should you fall,

and the long white season
makes the spring
more magnificent than you deserve.

About this poem

About coming to Vermont. About our winters. About dark places in life and the joy of springs, both literal and spiritual. Poetry is rarely about one thing.

The photograph was taken at one of the farms near my home in West Pawlet, Vermont.

Tom