December 2024
Bio Note: As I grow older winter becomes a challenging time with icy conditions and slippery sidewalks. We have five months of winter in the Canadian city which is now my home. Snow is beautiful when it graces the landscape in different shapes, but keeping warm can be a daily struggle even with a working furnace. My thoughts return to my Himalayan campus home of sixteen years where we had only a wood stove to keep us warm. Of course the temperatures did not plummet to minus thirty degrees! There we dressed with coats, hats and gloves inside and outside the home.
If Winter Comes
There’s no question of an ‘if’ for winters here are as inevitable as breathing. Before adopting another country as my own I forgot to check how long the winters are or how short the Spring, If there is to be a Spring at all. But what I love most is the *Shaw Fireplace on the television Where the virtual logs crackle and burn warming the heart, allowing it to imagine that Spring is following fast on the heels of Winter. With a leap of imagination A poet can keep out the cold. No matter if my house doesn’t have a fireplace.* The Shaw Fireplace is sponsored by Shaw Television during the Christmas season.
©2024 Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It's important. -JL