Spinning My Cocoon

'Wintertime on the Farm' (1850) by George Henry Durrie.

I could not recollect this Robert Frost poem and read it, again, many moons later (as I have his entire collected words in one volume), with new meaning last night. This is exactly why I love winter so and have come to embrace it as a verb and a noun that just seems to become me for a third of each year (but, like Persephone, I will emerge again, gladly and willingly, in the spring).

The Cocoon

As far as I can see this autumn haze

That spreading in the evening air both way,

Makes the new moon look anything but new,

And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue,

Is all the smoke from one poor house alone

With but one chimney it can call its own;

So close it will not light an early light,

Keeping its life so close and out of sign

No one for hours has set a foot outdoors

So much as to take care of evening chores.

The inmates may be lonely women-folk.

I want to tell them that with all this smoke

They prudently are spinning their cocoon

And anchoring it to an earth and moon

From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,––

Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it.

––Robert Frost

My husband and boys are out feeding cattle, doing farm chores. And I, wintering in on a ridge in Kentucky, spinning my cocoon.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine