Article: 261266 of talk.bizarre
From: gilbert@io.org (Zvi Gilbert)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: old woman winter
Date: 1 Dec 1995 00:35:38 -0500
Organization: The Church of Maximum Occupancy
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <49m47a$n89@ionews.io.org>
Status: O
X-Status: 

I once met old woman winter, in a windmill, under glass. It was the longest 
trip that I ever knew, past stretch of sky and into sharp and seamless blue. I 
was there once, and I wore this same coat and this same hat and the old tie 
that looks like a siamese cat.

Old woman winter is bigger than a bear and has arctic white flowers in her 
bony hair. She's a mound of old white stuff and she wears a beard down to the 
top of the floor. When she starts to hum, you wish she'd say more. She's got a 
pair of scissors to sweep her home clean.

I met old woman winter and I asked her this: Where is summer's drum, in winter 
infinite sky? Where is the heart that goes like a top? And how can we know 
summer when we know it's not?

And old woman winter said this to me:

     "Boys are blue and girls too;
      When winter runs, it runs by two."

I gave her an egg for my hospitality, and old woman winter smiled and showed 
her beautiful teeth clear like icicles. She made me sit down in the old room 
where time flows like water. I was snug inside the blizzard.

And I asked her this: When will spring's engine come again? How do I know when 
the grass will grow? And what is the meaning of the dangerous cold that creeps 
so soon?

Old woman winter said to me:

     "Girls are blue, and boys are too;
      When winter runs, it runs by two."

Old woman winter baked a dazzling smell-of-winter cake. The frosting was real 
frost, bright sweet lemon white. The filling was made of secret snows, found 
only at the poles where all the air froze. 

And I asked her this: Will there be a time of light white sun? How does winter 
become undone? And does the sky remember the warm of the breeze that blessed 
it so?

Old woman winter said to me:

     "Children, boys and girls are blue
      When winter runs, it runs by two."

Snug in the warm snow bed, old woman winter tucked me in. With a rhyme for my 
sleepy delight, the polar bear and penguin and arctic owl on the mantelpiece 
looked at me with light. And she said to me,

     "When winter runs, it runs by two."


--Zvi
gilbert@io.org
the present weighs heavy on the time before