Winter Photo as Poetry

 

Winter light poured over a cold landscape as I walked home this night. Silently the trees around me reached up against the darkening sky. As I glance skyward through these bare branches I was adrift in memory. Stopping I set my camera on the ground and I snapped the picture above.

When I was eighteen I loved an album cover with one bare tree upon it. While I never bought the album the band who made it became one of my favorites. The title was From the Witchwood. For years I assumed the title was From the Winterwood. My guess as the why of this has to do with my myopia and because of the bareness tree on the spare two tone album jacket. Only recently was I disabused of that notion when I decided to look the disk up and give it a listen. To me the Winterwood will always remain part of the title. It was apt to my mindset at the time. Michigan was the Winterwood.

The album cover’s fascination for me had more to do with my arriving in this north country inexperienced in the ways of winter as opposed to anything else. To me winter started in mid to late December and was done mostly by mid March or April 1 at the latest. That year, my first year here the time was not long before the autumn of late September turned into the Winterwood of late, late November. Golden leaves gone the spidery fingers of the trees reached up into the dark sky. They looked a great deal like the image on that LP.

No fear rose in me when I looked at those webs of wood woven skyward. Instead I saw the art of life. It was not long before I saw the beauty of black and grey branches coated with white crisp snow. The Winterwood was not something troubling or scary. It was instead part of life’s gallery of beauty.