BTT #75: Little Window

Little Window

.

When I was quite young, I would often lie awake in the top bunk in the basement room I shared with my brother.  Sometimes I would switch my pillow down to the where the foot of the bed came up against a window that looked out at ground level into the fields and mountains beyond.  Once when a thick snow was falling, I was lying on my back and watched as large snowflakes rapidly descended, catching and dancing in the light of my mother’s kitchen.  They spun hypnotically and soon everything else seemed to disappear except these points of light falling and falling out of the darkness, and at some point, my perspective shifted and it seemed as if the snowflakes were stars falling out of the heavens whirring downward past my view.  Soon I felt like I was not lying still at all, but rather was moving at high speed upward through dark space inhabited only by stars and galaxies swirling past me as I continued on some journey up and out and into the dark night sky.  For a little while, whenever there was a snowstorm, I would lie in my bed gazing up into the night trying to recreate the magical experience of flight, but it turns out it was to be a singular experience and I was never again able to recapture the illusion.

.

It was different after my father had built a deck around the back of the house covering the space above my window from the snow and sky.  The light of a cold day would now creep into the window sideways from the white snowy field a little further out rather than shining directly down from a sun now shaded by the wooden slats and beams.  The small area of ground outside my window had also changed, it was now never covered by snow, and must have been relatively warm because a little patch of grasses and thatch would remain intact even as the whole world beyond was wrapped in the icy drifts chiseled by the sharp canyon breezes constantly cutting just out past the thin protection of this small refuge.  Whereas my star-flight illusion had occurred only once, a different type of wonder would now reliably greet me through this window all through the winter.  Chickadees would dance and chirp and rest there, warmed by the heat escaping from the poorly insulated pane and shielded from ice and wind.  I could almost always count on being able to see them there, finding respite for a moment in a winter from which they otherwise could never flee.

.

Warmth seeps through the glass.

Birds flit in a small green patch

Encircled by snow.

.

Lona Gynt, January 2021.  All rights reserved.

.

I thought about doing this poem as a Terzanelle, but it quickly started to feel like a Haibun. I might try to Terzanelle it sometime. I tried to actually make it a traditional Haibun looking carefully at Lillian’s wonderful guidance in this post:

.

Happy New Year!

.

Linked to Open Link Night over at dVerse hosted by Sanaa. Here is the link. It is always a blast. 🙂

.

Open Link Night #281

Art work scratched out by Lona Gynt this morning. All rights reserved. ‘)