At Home in Winter

Norman Rockwell

At Home in Winter

1.

We sit across from one another

in front of the fire, the big logs

clicking and hissing. Outside

is bitter chill: branches stiffen,

grow brittle as crystal. You're

sewing a skirt, your mouth

full of pins, your head swimming

with Greek and Latin. You frown

so not to swallow any pins when

you try to smile at me

slumped under my TLS and bewailing

the seepage of my days, the way

my life runs off like water, yet

inexplicably happy at this moment

balanced between us like a tongue

of flame skiving a pine-log: seeming

to breathe, its whole involuntary life

spent giving comfort. This

could be a way to live - nothing

going to waste, such fullness

taking off, warm space, a fragrance.

In plain matter of fact it's

the sight of you bending to baste

the blue skirt before you pleat and

sew the waistband in, that enters

and opens inside me, so for a moment

I am an empty centre, nothing

at all

then back to this home truth

unchanged: you patiently taking

one thing at a time as I can't,

all the while your head beating with

hexameters and foreign habits. So

I go on reading in silence as if

I hadn't been startled into another life

for an instant all fire, all fragrance.

2.

I blow in from the noonwhite bite of snow

to find the whole house fragrant as a haycock

with the soup you've stirred up, its spirit

seeping into closets, curtains, bedrooms -

a prosperous mix of chicken-stock, carrots,

garlic, onion, thyme. All morning you've

wreathed your head in it, and turn to me now

like a minor deity of earth and plenty,

your hands dipped to the wrist in the flesh

of vegetables, your fingers trailing

threads from the glistening bones

cairned on the counter-top. You stand

on the edge of a still life - twist-strips

of onion peel, papery garlic sacs, bright

stumps of carrots, the delicate grass-green

stems of parsley, that little midden

of bones. Spell-stopped, I see how

in the middle of my daily life a sober house

with its feet on the ground, snowbound,

turns to spirit of chicken, airs a vegetable

soul, and breathes on me. Wooden spoon

still steaming, you turn away and say

in no time now we'll sit, and eat.

Eamon Grennan

“This could be a way to live –nothing going to waste…warm space, a fragrance.” Like a pine-log in the fireplace, “seeming to breathe, its whole involuntary life spent giving comfort.” The way Grennan describes the feeling of the house, and the person of his wife through her actions, is lovely. She is creating and transforming their home, their relationship. The bit about her conjuring the spirit of chicken and a vegetable soul within a snowbound house makes me smile. We happen to be snowbound also, at the moment, and I think after reading this, I may have to make us some chicken soup. (There you go, another practical use for poetry – to inspire cooking.)