J A N U A R Y 1 9 6 5 ![]() JANUARY 25thby Maxine Kumin | |||||||||||||
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All night in the flue like a trapped thing, like a broken bird, the wind knocked unanswered. Snow fell down the chimney, making the forked logs spit ashes of resurrected crickets. By 3 A.M. both stoves were dead. A ball of steel wool froze to the kitchen windowsill, while we lay back to back in bed, two thin survivors. Somewhere in a small dream a chipmunk uncorked from his hole and dodged along the wall. My love, we live at such extremes that when, in the leftover spite of the storm, we touch and grow warm, I can believe I saw the ground release that brown and orange commonplace sign of thaw. Now daylight the color of buttermilk tunnels through the coated glass. Lie still; lie close. Watch the sun pick splinters from the window flowers. Now under the ice, under twelve knee-deep layers of mud in last summer's pond the packed hearts of peepers are beating barely, barely repeating themselves enough to hang on. Maxine Kumin won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her collection of poems Up Country. Her most recent volumes are Connecting the Dots (1996) and Selected Poems: 1960-1990 (1997). Copyright © 1965 by Maxine Kumin. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; January 1965; January 25th; Volume 215, No. 1; page 67. |
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