winter stars

1.

Last night I was awake, troubled by the old dilemma, and I was looking out at the sky, hoping for stars. It wasn’t raining but there was cloud or mist. It was quiet. I was awake and thinking. We are approaching the bleak midwinter, the darkest moment of the year. Awake and thinking, trouble heavy on my shoulders.

2/

I had my swimming lane to myself this morning. Up and down, the blue lengths. In the rhythm of my strokes, I was half-hearing the old admonitions. Put away your hope. Put away your pride. Up and down, cap pulled over my ears.

3.

Coffee by the fire, bark tossed in for extra heat. I don’t know what to do. The old dilemma. I think about that word. A double (di, meaning twice) proposition (lemma, meaning premise), with neither option being desirable. The fire blazes. I begin a small spiral with yellow thread on the edge of a blue star. Sometimes this is a way to think. And I remember a poem, also a way to think.

God, give us a long winter
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride––before
our age ends.
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.
       –Adam Zagajewski, trans. Clare Cavanagh

4.

Stitch in the heat of a good fire. Listen to Valdy on the radio, remembering his kindness a few summers ago when I met him at Salmon Arm, how we talked of the dances in the Shirley Hall, near Sooke, and he played a couple of those old sweet songs.