Sample the Core

Mary Frost, one of Thunder Bay's best and best loved known poets, gets to the core of winter in a sample from the upcoming book Core Samples.

Weather Report
In these acres, I am the micro-climate
and the prevailing wind.
Winter's dreariness
started in my eye and proved infectious.
My skeleton informs those creaking branches.
My thoughts are silent crows manoevering tree to tree.

I will scrape winter off
as yesterday
I cracked the ice-crust off the car
when freezing drizzle coated everything.
Glazed road-signs with a saw-toothed lower edge
cut no ice with me.

I will go inward
where a sun-spark smoulders like fire in ashes
and come back singing,
carrying a torch for spring.
The red osier dogwood will flare and flame again;
the paper birch turn over a new leaf.

IN PRAISE OF LOUD CHRISTMAS CARDS

BY MARY FROST

Christmas is about birth, which is bloody
And starting over, which is strenuous.
It is no time to be timid.
Go country with it, something simple and strong
but if not that, go crazy.

Big bells and bows in reds and golds;
hot-stamped metallics, glitter and glitz.
Dancing snowmen whooping it up;
whole herds of rooftop reindeer.
Invite the forest into the house
and leave the gurus of good taste
out in the cold. Renew yourself
with fundamental things like fire and feasting.

When the card you choose to send arrives,
let it spring out of its envelope,
vigorous as a Hussar
and deliver its salutations with spirit,
vibrant as a blazing trumpet
prophesying to a midnight sky.