Life's like that....cantilevering one McKuen poetry moment into feet beside a hearth.  We try to reason with atmosopheric forces churning icy word slush.  As ski boots thaw out we're thinking about Black Diamonds and seeing feet before the fire, ankles dripping rain drops of what was just snow.

  Newspapers never had road closure information as up to date as digitalia.  We'd smell the barn--unafraid reindeer--hang up skies on a special nail thingie outside the main haus, go inside and read our colonials.  When our friends stopped for hot beverage they stayed on skis (maybe an invite to sauna sometime) and stretched calves and arms, debating changing poles or pole baskets.  Inside if sunlight not dismal, we'd get to read of far away colonials such as Dante and other masters.  A kinfolk neat in pants perfectly dried might quip on why the Dutch didn't write as much.  "Why father?" A son might want to know.  A sister might intellectually look up from darning and say, "Yes, father, why?"

  Grabbing a smaller child for knee thaw and sitting at a tableclothed meal round, he might sigh the day into rest, be present and let the cupboards of memories explain before New Worlds.  Or he might straighten scarves like ties and bows and suggest going back to school for the elder ones.  Tea cups on flat nails (none ever wasted from shoeing horses) would never shake but when the draughts beckoned family to wake up, turn the damper so we don't blow away, and, by the way, those Dutch were too busy doing.  A teenage girl might rustle under her quilt and sit up Indian-style, ankles catching moonlight not as ivory as her nightgown, "They were?"

  "Oh yes, the boys, busy making and crafting and not just thinking about all that like those Reni-I-talianos.  I'll tell you in the morning dearie.". A simple latch would not click into place, safe.

  It was controversial then, when the mother and sister by marriage put cracked but glued/velcro'd saucers and even soup bowls on the ledge of the snow haus and the Mr. didn't ask at first.  "Why don't you ask Father?"  Lips would purse but teeth not search for tobacco pipe because decided.  "I suspect." All the while the reindeer only gently stamping-drag, stamping-drag THEY KNEW.  Up through the mountainous rock's crevices a rumbly steam growled, not like wolves, but tumbly warmer there, the girl reideer told the male who finally spat on it.

  "Like a camel?" A child on a lap in the New World of America asked.  Naptime, a nurse with the funniest hat would gentle-sternly sweep from lap to keep us all on regiment.

  A hand reaching to ottoman anything to read.  The Englishk Literature book, receptor of the good onion skin papel passed in the child's story.

  But in the mount that lies from Eden north, 

  Where he first lighted, soon discerned his looks

  Alien from Heaven, with passions foul obscured.

  Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade

  Lost sight of him.  One of the banished crew

  I fear hath ventured from the deep to raise

  New troubles; him thy care must be to find.   {570, 575}

  Hearth fire flashing taller, grate not glowing red, Sister's eyebrows raising and falling in unseen.  "You seem startled Sister." But she did not.