Monday, February 05, 2007
2:19 PM
The Windchill Factor
I'm pretty sure I posted this poem in one of my blogs years ago (with so many under my belt, it's hard to remember which blog and which February) -- but it's only this year that I've come to REALLY understand it's less about Valentine-less moping and more about wintry despair and sluggishness. This year, I've learned about windchill, how the strength and speed of winds blowing from the lake turn the already awful chill (today at -15 Celsius) into something more frigid (-24). I've learned that "flurries" are not delicious, "cold feet" are not something to be taken lightly, and that "ice-breakers" aren't fun songs or games you do to "warm up" a group. That ice is not my element, that I can't skate and glide across the ice to save my life. That wearing powder blush on my cheeks is unnecessary, as my entire face gets red anyway every time I step outside. I've been fighting this almost instinctive urge to store heat by eating (and getting) fat. I've had to deal with territory wars in the kitchen, over the freezer and Ziploc containers and utensils (one housemate and her ever-present boyfriend have taken to hiding her pans and knives in her third-floor room). I've started apartment-searching again, and today had to walk out into a snowy world -- I felt like I was a character in a TV with really bad reception, bad white static. I miss my black fur sausage sleeping on a pillow beside me.February
Margaret Atwood
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
he’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
Labels: house, poetry, winter
