A House in Winter's Hold

There’s a house on a hill in a woods somewhere,
in a woods where no one sees
(save those who pass with a lasting stare
at its glimmer of light through the trees).
In winter it’s a shadow of black
half-hidden by trees of gray,
and an arm of smoke
gropes from its stack
and waves with a lonely sway.



Then comes a whistling winter wind.
The house shuts tight
with a shoulder pinned
against a threatening door
and waits for what’s in store.


A blizzard is coming;
windows are humming;
to the wind’s tune
the shutters are drumming.
The house is clenched in Winter’s hold—
freezing, frosting, frightening cold,
bare tress bending to and fro
in the pageantry of snow:
sifting, blowing, drifting, growing,
Autumn’s reaped and Winter’s sowing—
sowing seeds of icy white;
snow sifts through the moonless night;
falling thick with crystal frills
skirting ‘round the timbered hills;
lacing lace on dry leaves curled,
still clung to branches bare;
and covering softly all the world
that the house on the hill
in the woods somewhere
will ever, ever know.

© Copyright March, 1978, TK, Patterns of Ink
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This was one of the first poems I ever wrote. (The title never seemed right but I left it all unrevised.) It was an experiment in rhythms. The setting was inspired in part by Frost's "An Old Man's Winter Night" and the knowledge that a part of my father could happily live that life... but the linew were based mostly on that fine but foreboding feeling that comes when a family is snowbound in a winter storm as we were more than once in our house on a hill deep in the woods (which, by the way, is not in the first picture. Also, our house never did get shutters, but they were part of Dad's original plan.)
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