january

This month has given us very cold days and now today I hung
my laundry outside: 2 loads. All dried. The sun is making shadows
 very low now in the shadows. It is waking up the other side of the
world. 

I opened a few windows to bring fresh air into the house.



from dailydoseofstuf tumblr

This is a rather long poem by Luci Shaw about the thaw
of January. I read this morning a good sentence about
poetry by CS Lewis in Reflections of the Psalms: 

For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what has been
before invisible and in audible. 

Psalm for the January Thaw Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage, including the soggy gray mess on the deck like an abandoned mattress that has lost its inner spring. For the gurgle of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when I step off the porch. For slush. For the glisten on the sidewalk that only wets the foot sole and doesn't send me slithering. Everything is alert to this melting, the slow flow of it, the declaration of intent, the liquidation. Glory be to God for changes. For bulbs breaking the darkness with their green beaks. For moles and moths and velvet green moss waiting to fill the driveway cracks. For the way the sun pierces the window minutes earlier each day. For earthquakes and tectonic plates-earth's bump and grind-and new mountains pushing up like teeth in a one-year-old. For melodrama— lightning on the sky stage, and the burst of applause that follows. Praise him for day and night, and light switches by the door. For seasons, for cycles and bicycles, for whales and waterspouts, for watersheds and waterfalls and waking and the letter W, for the waxing and waning of weather so that we never get complacent. For all the world, and for the way it twirls on its axis like an exotic dancer. For the north pole and the south pole and the equator and everything between.

by Luci Shaw