I wish you warm

Hi everyone,

During the coming days I wish you well as the expected storm hits in the area where you live. If you lose power, I hope you can find ways to stay comfortable. Looks like it will take quite some time for the snows and ice to melt. I’m sure that internet outages will be widespread. In case we lose ours, today I may work on a few posts in advance and hope I will have opportunities to get them released as the days tick by.

I hate winter, always have. I’ve posted this poem before but it comes back to me today. It’s in my autobiographical collection, Connecting Dots (2004) When I was 8, my family moved from Ajo, Arizona back to Springfield in the winter of 1945 so my dad and a partner could start a block company. That December ranked as the 9th coldest up to that time since the weather bureau started keeping records in 1895. The average low nightly temperature was 17.5 degrees. The only place we could find to rent was little more than a shack located on the Roberson farm on Oak Grove Lane, a mile from the school I would attend. No electricity. Privy out back. We heated with coal in a small potbelly stove. If the fire went out, the temperature inside dropped to roughly what it was outside. Water left in a glass beside my bed sometimes froze to ice during the night. Mom papered the windows with newspapers to help block the cold air coming in around the casings and on windy nights the loose linoleum floor covering made spooky noises flapping up and down at the threshold of the only door. We slept with our clothes on and all available sheets and blankets piled on our beds. One morning walking to school my hands became frostbitten. The janitor ran cold water over them and rubbed them until the pain subsided enough for me to go to class. Here’s the poem.

Welcome to Missouri

Cold surrounds my warm spot.
Rolling over
is like touching snow.
I think of snow angels.

With extra clothes
piled on the bed,
I think of chalk outlines. 
“This is where we found
the frozen body.”	

I miss my friends.
I hate this house,
the coal stove 
with its belly full
of cold ashes.

Dad says soon
we’ll find something better.

A prisoner inside
my own outline,
I wait for morning.

(c) 2004, David L. Harrison, all rights reserved