Colors of Winter, poem in progress

rosehips in snow
rosehips in snow
Colors of Winter

Colors of Winter

Original sentence

The air was full of fine snow flurries, and the ripe rose hips were red as summer against the snow.

First draft

The air was full of crystal flurries
the ripe rose hips red as summer
against the snow.

Second draft

Air full of crystal flurries
rose hips as red as summer
in the snow.

January 2, 2023

(poem in progress © 2023 Bernadette E. Kazmarski)

I drafted this about a week ago when I posted this photo, just as a sentence, knowing I wanted to work with it. The photo was a difficult catch, the flurries in movement and the rose hips holding still and glistening. I tried to capture the feeling of the movement and contrast that I remembered, and that still inspire me.

I composed the first draft poem in the past tense as was the original statement.

Then I felt it would work better in present tense.

I think I’ll leave it here for today, and I know I’ll come back to it.


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Snow in the Cemetery, a Sacred Spot

Snow in the Cemetery
Snow in the Cemetery
Snow in the Cemetery

How many snowfalls have gently covered this ground,
How many summer sunsets flared against the rock of this cliff,
How many feet have trod this sacred spot, human and animal alike,
Stood on this outcropping as I do today
feeling history beneath my feet
in the remains of recent generations
and from the millennia.

The land, carved by the wiles of nature through the past,
stretches out before me, opening
into the hills and valleys of the future
and I wonder,
have all the watchers felt the same exhilaration
at the potential of the unknown
and, so moved, place their beloveds’ remains in this high cliff
so that they could still watch eternity unfold
beneath a comforting blanket of snow?

poem Snow in the Cemetery ©2011 Bernadette E. Kazmarski

How many snowfalls have blanketed this site in Carnegie, white flakes silently falling all around and filling the valley seen from this cliff?

Currently, it’s Ross Colonial Cemetery, named so for the Ross family of settlers around the time of the Revolutionary War and it contains graves and headstones that date from that time as well as more recent ones.

But the site has been a lookout for millennia. One can stand on the cliff’s edge and see most of the valley containing Carnegie and the oxbow of Chartiers Creek as it enters and leaves town. My mother told me her brothers and others found Native American artifacts in this area.

Standing there in any weather, I can feel the history beneath my feet, the land unchanged by time, holding the memories of all the watchers, like me, looking off into the distance of the valley and of history.


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Poem for Saturday: The Last Red Berries

The ast Red Berries

What gentle lesson I learn from this nightshade,
unwanted in its habitat, its toxins legendary,
growing as it is from a crack in the pavement
no other greenery but itself for comfort,
facing unprotected the wind and cold and precipitation
splashed with road salt and motor oil and antifreeze,
yet gracefully spreading tangled limbs against the snow and
offering its berries to birds,
who tolerate its poison and disperse its seeds,
one of the last food sources available
after a long winter,
and patiently waiting for spring.

Surely in all this, all have our place in the story.

poem copyright 2010 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

The ground still covered with a foot of snow, the streets with ice, in March, I would have thought anything edible had already been eaten. I walked my errands to Main Street especially then because the streets were crowded with piles of snow, and no parking spaces were available.

But as the snow melted there emerged bright red berries, plump and shiny, held over from last autumn. I took an eyeful of those berries, and many photos, so inspired by their tenacity, thinking of how nightshade is usually ripped out yet here would likely save the lives of a few backyard birds because it had been missed. It waited with dignity to fulfill its role.


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Poem for Saturday: Snow in the Cemetery

Snow in the Cemetery

How many snowfalls have gently covered this ground,
How many summer sunsets flared against the rock of this cliff,
How many feet have trod this sacred spot, human and animal alike,
Stood on this outcropping as I do today
feeling history beneath my feet
in the remains of recent generations
and from the millennia.

The land, carved by the wiles of nature through the past,
stretches out before me, opening
into the hills and valleys of the future
and I wonder,
have all the watchers felt the same exhilaration
at the potential of the unknown
and, so moved, place their beloveds’ remains in this high cliff
so that they could still watch eternity unfold
beneath a comforting blanket of snow?

poem Snow in the Cemetery ©2011 Bernadette E. Kazmarski

How many snowfalls have blanketed this site in Carnegie, white flakes silently falling all around and filling the valley seen from this cliff?

Currently, it’s Ross Colonial Cemetery, named so for the Ross family of settlers around the time of the Revolutionary War and it contains graves and headstones that date from that time as well as more recent ones.

But the site has been a lookout for millennia. One can stand on the cliff’s edge and see most of the valley containing Carnegie and the oxbow of Chartiers Creek as it enters and leaves town. My mother told me her brothers and others found Native American artifacts in this area.

Standing there in any weather, I can feel the history beneath my feet, the land unchanged by time, holding the memories of all the watchers, like me, looking off into the distance of the valley and of history.


Read more:   Essays   ♦  Short Stories  ♦  Poetry

All Rights Reserved.   ♦   © Bernadette E. Kazmarski   ♦   PathsIHaveWalked.com

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My Garden Waits Under a Blanket of Spring

My Garden Waits Under a Blanket of Spring

My garden waits under a blanket of spring
gently rippled snow comforting the earth
drowsing buds protected undercover
will burst and pour forth
hot, humid mornings, big yellow spiders, baskets of green beans
this heavy cover now protects, will melt and nourish.

poem © 2010 Bernadette E. Kazmarski

When I look at my garden, surprised at all its hillocks and gulleys remembered full of life and covered so deeply and densely with growing things, I wonder how the miracle ever happens again that I have baskets of beans and tomatoes just a few months later when all seems frozen and gone. It’s really not. As one of those ironies of nature where unrelated processes fit together like a puzzle to make a whole ecosystem, it’s the icy blanket of snow that would seem to smother and freeze and end the potential that actually keeps the spark of life warm.


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Snow at Night

Alley in Dusk, 8 x 10, acrylic © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

I check under the streetlight whenever I pass the window,
the still night scene like a Hopper painting, tranquil and perfect,
or the set on a stage, ready for the players, the houselights dim.
I anticipate the first action of the play,
and I grow impatient—
the stillness, the leaden sky as the afternoon aged
weighted with promise,
the early darkness,
then suddenly a bit of movement under the arc of the streetlight,
I hold my breath and still myself—was that it?
then a pause, then again, at an angle, a bit of ash gently drifting,
and another, then two at once,
then five,
then too many to count, meandering,
all in the same direction,
appear in the streetlight’s cone of illumination, then disappear.
I am transfixed
as the flakes simply continue as if without agenda,
my neighbors’ windows are all covered,
lights and flickering TVs behind curtains and blinds,
I am the only one who has witnessed the beginning.

poem Snow at Night ©2006 Bernadette E. Kazmarski

I don’t know about you, but I’m waiting for that first snowfall, quietly appearing as if by magic under the streetlight.

I read this poem at my recent poetry reading “Walking Around” as one of the experiences we share in a small town.

The painting in this post, “Alley at Night”, is available as a print from Portraits of Animals.


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All Rights Reserved.   ♦   © Bernadette E. Kazmarski   ♦   PathsIHaveWalked.com

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