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42 KELLY CHERRY Wintering The asparagus, the ivy, and the anonymous summer vines, unleafed, snarled in snow, lean against the wire dog-pen. The wind is from River Falls, and before that, Idaho. My house is lighted against the dark. On their shelves, books huddle in their jackets. I have read the books that tell of difficult journeys and anonymous desires, of lanterns that have lighted the way to Arcadia or the North Pole, books that explain snow, or the way living things grow, or the way lovers fall in love, each to the other an open book, as if love were the pen writing, and their lives a book. I stand looking out as the snow falls obsessively. The night is anonymous. Supper will be snow baked in the oven I have lighted, birch bark, roots, and berries, dressed with light, served on a paper plate with a pen for a fork—a low-calorie diet, light as a single snowflake , not found in cookbooks but typical of anonymous readers en route from Wisconsin to Borneo or Victoria Falls. While I eat, I read and the snow falls on the tangled vines too lightweight to stand up to snow. Anonymous as a nun, I write books, pushing my pen across paper, or read others’ books, in a room as quiet as falling snow. It’s no secret that one who reads can occasionally fall to thinking how life in books is so much more exciting and enlightening than her real life, in which she’s penned up, isolate, and anonymous. The snow falls lightly as starlight is the sort of thing one reads in books penned by Anon. ...

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