“Olsen’s Pond”, a poem…..and Happy New Year To All!

Please bring in your cats and dogs, your pets.  The weather is fierce, and so many animals are killed by exposure. All over this country, dogs are chained to trees, or chained in kennels that have no real protection from the elements.  Here in the south, the brutality  and ignorance  towards animals is horrendous.  Even an official with the Atlanta Humane Society years ago told me that ‘dogs don’t mind sleeping on concrete, they don’t need shelter’.  The jackass.  I wish I could chain  him on concrete for a night.  He might reconsider when his joints freeze.

 We heat with a woodburning stove.  Our nine cats call a truce and all sleep on a wool blanket in front of the stove.  We are expecting some form of snow this Sunday night.  Tuesday we are expecting 6 degrees in the morning…and it’s not going to get beyond freezing for days.  Though I love Winter, and the possibilites of snow, it is hard on animals who don’t have proper shelter.  Make sure yours do.

Lady Nyo

OLSEN’S POND 

 

I returned to the old house,

now still, vacant,

staring with unshaded eyes

upon a snowy front garden,

shrubs overgrown with the

lustiness of summer and neglect

now split to the ground,

taxed with a heavy snow.

– 

I tried to light the parlor stove,

old cranky cast iron smoker

clanking and rattling

when heated in the best of times

now given up the ghost,

cold metal unyielding to wadded paper

and an old mouse nest.

 –

The silence of the rooms only broken

by hissing wind whipping around  eaves

rattling old bones in the attic,

stirring the haunts sleeping in  corners.

 –

It took a time for twigs to catch,

the water to turn coffee,

bacon and eggs brought from the city

and cooked in an old iron skillet–

tasting far better in the country air.

– 

I looked down at hands cracked

in the brittle winter light,

moisture gone,  

hair static with electricity,

feet numbed from the chill,

that woodstove not giving up

more heat than a miser.

– 

I walked down to Olsen’s pond,

looked through the glassine surface

remembered the boy who had fallen

through the ice while playing hockey–

slipped under the thin cover, disappearing

without a sound,

only noticed when our puck flew

Up in the air and he, the guard, missing.

– 

We skated to the edge, threw bodies flat

trying to reach him just out of catch,

crying like babies, snot running down chins,

knowing he was floating just under the ice,

silent as the lamb he was.

 –

Childhood ended that day for most of us.

We started to drift away to the city,

our skates and sticks put up,

Olsen’s pond deserted like a haunted minefield.

– 

Fifty years ago I still remember that day

when stretched as far as I could

my belly freezing on treacherous ice,

grasping to reach a life just out of sight,

his muffler and stick floating to the surface–

The boy, the important part,

gone for good from a chilly winter ‘s play.

– 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009, 2012, 2014

“Olsen’s Pond” previously published in “A Seasoning of Lust”, available at Lulu.com

 

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