Mechtild's

The second of jan-u-wine's winter poems is newly written, inspired by the painting below. This time, we look through the eyes of an older Frodo, a Frodo who has been through much, yet still is trying to take in his parents' deaths.

Again jan-u-wine does her magic, choosing just this and that word, this and that remembered image, to make a poem that takes us inside Frodo's lingering mix of thoughts and feelings. Its pace is like the winter river's, pensive, grave, stilling here and there while memories glance up from its ice-mirrored depths. But the rhythm keeps pulsing along, quiet and deep, like the water in the winter river.

The picture used for this post, found by chance browsing for winter river scenes, was painted by Martin A. Poole. I found more of his work on line, mostly landscapes, which were beautiful and atmospheric like this one, 'Winter River'. I found almost no biographical information about him, only that he is American-educated (graduated SUNY-Bufflao 1979) and that his work is being shown and sold from galleries. Hopefully, he is alive and well and still painting.


~*~

River-dawn


Gentle
upon the face
of the Hill,

this quiet dawn.

Stars,

west-faded and wide-flung,
scribe silver fire
upon the great
sky-cloak.

A small wind
cards
cold fingers through
leaf-poor trees.


Today,
I am in mind of another dawn,
a day-beginning

so distanced
it should have been a dreme....


Uncommon cold,
that winter,

the river's crystal-brown thread
slowed

and weary
in its narrow course,

black-grey bank-stones
near hidden

by blue-green
ice-melt,

tree roots,
night-rimed and

sparking
beneath an admantine
necklacing of snow.


I remember the dawn, that day.


Oh, yes.

I remember.


Da and Mumma had gone,
you see,

the river binding them
in green-gold silence,

the quieting waves of her
parting us

forever.

Gone.

They were........

they

*are*

gone.


Yet ever,

ever
did I seek them,

ever
did my heart

follow.


Beneath and between
the reeds,

the pools,
the little

back-flung eddies,

ever
did I find myself
close by

the Water-witch,

she
who had held them,

she
who knew

their ending.


Perhaps,
within the silences,
the dark depths

of her,

there was some memory,

still,

some small
remainder

of
them.



And so I attended her,
the River-Lady.


This morning,
I attended her,

the sky orange-pink with winter-water'd
dawn,

fog lying
like silver lace

upon green-mounded hillocks,


trees,
starve-limbed and lonely.

The very air,
even,

smelled of cold,
the sharp spike of it

burning and crystalline,

magikal, somehow,
within my lungs.

I wondered,
in my small and childish way,

I wondered,
(as my hand broke the ice at river's edge),

I wondered
if it were burning and crystalline

and magikal
to breathe water

instead of air.

I wondered if you might see the sky
from beneath the water-curtain,

or the wavering
tall ranks of slender trees......

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Near frozen, entire,
the river that day,

the bank harsh
with the sliver-creak
of cast-up ice,

the little water-ribbon
cold and still
before the Sun's swift rise.

And I stayed by her,
this river,

this thief......


All the long day,
I kept my vigil,

watching and
waiting

as the sky became
burnt with blue,

warming waters
journeying, at last,

to the distanced Sea.


Birds came,
their small, winter songs

rising
like smoke,

each note parceled out,

thin as thread
upon the wakening air.

At the last,
the Sun

painted gold and rose
upon the encircled clouds,

touched its gentle light

to depthless,
secret places.



At the last, I turned from her.



Finally,
I *could* turn

from her,
the cold wind

welcome
and bruising
upon my uncovered
face.


______________________________

Tender dawn,
parchment-fragile,

touches the Hill,

waits,
like a held-breath
in brake

and thicket
and field,

soothes
each wandering stream.


And still I stand,

in the dying of the night
and the birthing of the day.

I stand,
and dreme,

forever,

upon the River
and a lonely

winter's dawn.

Previous Frodo entry:

jan-u-wine's "A Winter's Day", plus paintings by Frits Thaulow and Anders Andersen-Lundby.

Other Links:

~ All entries featuring jan-u-wine's poems.