I’ll start off by setting a suitably wintry tone: I recently came across this poem by Nuyorican poet Joseph Pacheco – ‘Cold winter morn in Florida’ –
For blood grown thin
forty Fahrenheit is Siberia –
breezes suddenly blue
and brittle
shiver the citrus leaves –
a birdsong
bleak and off key
chills our sense –
sunlight, pale and tentative,
shelters us from shade
where wisps of vapour
from our mouths recall
northern winter breath
thicker than cigarette smoke,
that reminds us:
Death owns a time share here
and watches,
dressed in warm-ups,
from his lanai.A lanai is a roofed patio, and the poet is complaining about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (about 4 Centigrade)! Eeh, they don’t know they’re born….but what I like about the poem is the introduction of death’s time share, and the chilling sense of that beady eye relentlessly scanning the populace.
Anyway, back to TVA in Winter, hopefully less about deathly chill and more about positivity, even in the current economic climate – honestly, if I’ve said that once over the years…
Rowena Sommerville, Director