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Friday 6 December 2013

Hard Freeze


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Fruits gelats (Sant Gregori, Vall de Llémena, Catalunya): photo by Miquel Bohigas Costabella (desdibuix-miquel), 29 November 2013




The cherry ball on the mercury stick drops off at three zero

Off to the left the iridescent glow of the sea glances

Gold and hard in the thin indifferent sun

Ah and all the green and growing things wonder what hit them



Nasturtium hibiscus and clover shriveling

Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness

This silent blast from the polar freezer fuses

Leaf arteries into obelisks of bright glass






Tres d'hivern (Sant Gregori, Vall de Llémena, Catalunya): photo by Miquel Bohigas Costabella (desdibuix-miquel), 1 December 2013


Hivern amb fons blau (Sant Gregori, Vall de Llémena, Catalunya): photo by Miquel Bohigas Costabella (desdibuix-miquel), 1 December 2013




Solitària fred: photo by Miquel Bohigas Costabella (desdibuix-miquel), 29 November 2013


Cor gelat (Sant Gregori, Vall de Llémena, Catalunya): photo by Miquel Bohigas Costabella (desdibuix-miquel), 29 November 2013

14 comments:

TC said...

Many thanks, Nin, you've just melted at least two and a half icicles!

(Either that, or I'm beginning to puddle up...)

ACravan said...

Nin said it. This is extraordinary, almost unbelievably beautiful, and a real lift on this cold, rainy PA morning. Curtis

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

i've just set the top photo to be my desktop background

the words are well-observed

at the risk of revealing how middlebrow i am, let me say this posting reminds me of my favorite section of disney's fantasia

Poet Red Shuttleworth said...

Poem + Images = a jewel-bright morning gift. Thank you, Tom!

Hazen said...

Extraordinarily beautiful! Somewhere (but not here this morning) it's winter.

Maureen said...

What a gorgeous post.

HisFireFly said...

breathtaking beauty
great capture
thank you!

Nora said...

This is wonderful.

Mose23 said...

The poem's as exquisite as frost. There's some genetic thread from Keats in this.



Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore said...

Speechlessly perfect. There's a constant drizzle outside my Philadelphia window tonight, but the soundtrack to the photos and your crystalline poem is total silence broken only by occasional tiny leaf-tinkling...

Tinker Greene said...

tom, you live in my memory as the perpetrator of what i remember as the best poetry reading of my life. (early eighties, valencia street, san francisco.) this poem recalls to me your mastery. (choice of pictures as always impressive also.)

TC said...

Warmed and cheered by these lovely comments.

It's been unusually cold here (as is implied). Four homeless people died out in the elements over the weekend. No weather for roughsleeping.

Possibly Catalunya is a bit more photogenic in the cold than some places.

WB may be on to something, by the by. This poem seems to remember the Eve of St Agnes with at least a passing shudder.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Yes to all said here, a lovely poem with these photos on this morning of close to "three zero . . . The silent blast from the polar freezer. . ."

TC said...

Thanks, Steve. After a week of it, thirty gets to feel like the new twenty. We've been huddling with the animals. (The fur's the thing.)