The January thaw, that’s what the old ones called it. Winter lets go for a span of days and rain comes, melting much of the snow away.
The forest opens up a bit. I walk through the trees, the ground is crushed down from where the snow was. There is almost no colour. Darkness lingers in branches and the forest is quiet.
I see two young deer standing stalk still, they are exactly the colour of the land.
Deeper into the woods I go, far past my normal haunts. In the distance I hear the crackling of a fire. Cautiously I walk forward. There, deep in the dark winter wood where no house should be, is a house. Trim stone, glass windowed, curtains drawn.
I smell wood smoke. Around the corner, there is an old woman. She has a long stick and she is boiling something in a cauldron, stabbing at the fire cinders with her stick. A red hood covers her face. She doesn’t look up but I can see the tip of her nose.
I feel like the deer I saw, frozen in place between fright and flight. The woman never looks up, never moves from her place. Old mother winter stirs her fire, and I know that when she’s done boiling her cauldron the snows will come back, bowing the trees down, sifting through branches.
As I walk back I feel the bite of snow in the air, tiny constructions of frost drift down between trees, ice runes, writing winter across the sky.













Thanks Jake for the rainy day lift!
It’s snowing here now. I guess the cauldron did its job!
Jim
Good poem felt the chill of the woods