Wind whipped snow at the window all through dinner. Then it stilled. Then it got really cold. We walked out across pitch-black pasture, waving our puny flashlight at invisible black cow. Miraculously, no one tripped to death on frozen dung. We made a bonfire. Fire is so photogenic, we all agreed. No one knew where to look. Down at the near heat, or up at the far fire stars.
Karen’s reading Dante’s Inferno & offers this addendum:
Not yet had Nessus reached the other side
when we were on our way into a forest
that was not marked by any path at all.
No green leaves, but rather black in colour,
no smooth branches, but twisted and entangled,
no fruit, but thorns of poison bloomed instead.
No thick, rough scrubby home like this exists –
not even between Cecina and Corneto –
for those wild beasts that hate the run of farmlands.
Dante, Inferno CANTO XIII
. . . .