February

"Desolate winter is dazzling in this landscape. Snow blankets the countryside and chills a peasant bringing his wares to town with the aid of a donkey, while a farm family warms themselves in a wooden house."
About.com

For the past year, I've been posting medieval paintings to mark the start of each month. They come from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, considered the finest "Book of Hours" ever created. The purpose of a devotional calendar is to follow the months mindfully and prayerfully, again and again and again. That is, if you were among the few people rich and lucky enough to own an illuminated manuscript in 1413.

Now you can download them off the Web-- these little pictures are pubic domain. Someday I'd like to see the originals in the Paris Musee Conde since low-res photographs can't do justice to the color and detail. They come from a 8 x 11 inch leather book bound in the 18th century, and it's likely the original size of the pages was once larger, because in several places the binder cuts into the panels. Enough to give an medieval archivist a conniption fit.

So it's February. We woke up to 29 degrees this morning, and I forgot to bring the plants into the laundry room last night. Here's a deep winter poem by Sylvia Plath:

Sheep in Fog

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells--
All morning the
Morning has been blackening.

A flower left out
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

Sylvia Plath
1963