12/15/10 Sweet Blue dreams
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.