2.12.2014

tear our ears
...Thoreau's Journal: 12-Feb-1854

To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare, and you hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting cold-steel scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter’s band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in the jay’s scream. Like the creak of a cart-wheel. There is no cushion for sounds now. They tear our ears.

4 comments:

michael jameson said...

to truly live you must totally take in your surroundings! you were born to do just that!,nature provides you with the opportunity to use all your senses at once! this is the magic that allows one to judge perfection!. michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com

Jan said...

Perfect.

denise bottmann said...

great blog!
http://lendowalden.blogspot.com/2011/02/re-walden-ii.html

denise

Quinton Blue said...

Reads like free-verse poetry.