Legendry; Message from Governor Snelling and Poetry Reading by William Mundell

Why. Good evening. Welcome to legendry and our

first annual Christmas message from the governor of Vermont. We opened with box Partita in D minor for violin as it was played by a blonde on again. He's now conductor of the Brattleboro Music Center. Following governor's knowings message who will be winter poems by William Mondale of East Dover Vermont recently recorded for this special program. Governor Richard Snelling. I like to think that 200 years ago romance leaders and the early Roman governors carried the message of

Christmas which is after all a message of hope wherever they went. Traditions have always made Christmas I think a special event in Vermont one can almost feel the parallel between the Christmas story and the birth of Christ in the manger in a rural part of the world. To the Vermont tradition I think we're close to the kind of background which preceded the birth of Christ and the awareness about the world that the Messiah had been born. I think that the snow the end of the season and the beginning of a new one makes Christmas a special event in Vermont. It's hard for those of us who have lived here all or most of our lives to even have the concept of Christmas being so dear an event as it must be of

course and those parts of the world where every season of the year is pretty much the same as every other and the very fact that we do have seasons here and that they are so meaningful and so full of contrasts I think enhances the significance of Christmas. Oh Christmas is the season of hope. It's the end of a of an era and the start always of another. And we see that and the natural cycle of the year but we see it also in our personal cycle. We rejoice because frequently and hopefully we have our family and our loved ones with us. And we think memories of the past I always do. I can't think of Christmas without thinking of loved ones no longer with us no longer able to join us at all. Missed time one of the saddest things in the entire Christmas season is addressing Christmas cards. The older you get. The longer is the list of names that are no longer to be sent Christmas cards no longer to.

Join hands. In memories of the past but at the same time you start thinking about the new year and the new opportunities. And the really deeper significance of Christmas and the birth of Christ as the birth of opportunity for all mankind. And so it's the merrymaking and the joy the very deep joy of Christmas and the exchange of gifts and all those pleasant things. I think it behooves us and particularly those of us in government to recognize that this is a time of year for us also to think about obligations on that. About. Opportunities to be seen as duties to be fulfilled. Because as many of us have the great opportunities to rejoiced. We have to recognize that there are many who find little in which they can take joy except. The spiritual evidence of the brotherhood of mankind and we owe it to them to

do everything we can to expand their opportunities and reasons for our rejoicing. And we can do that not just in a material way but we can do it by observing fully our obligation to make things better for everyone. So I think of Christmas as a time to give blessings. To express our appreciation. To take great joy in family and friends and loved ones. To look to the future to be very very. Thoughtful about our opportunities to serve. And in all of that to take joy even in the duties and opportunities there is joy and that to me is really the lesson and the significance of Christmas. They are joy of service Brotherhood and of opportunity. And I take great pleasure. In wishing all Vermonters on behalf of the state government and all of the

employees of state government and in a personal way on my own behalf and from my family a very very Merry Christmas. Great time I'll voice this a leaf on curling is a poem a meaning growing out of the dark blood over out of our windows brooding. Hey bud furling is a song rising out of honeycombs of ice a south wind teasing the somber snow. It's loft running

along Brooks and now it's gilded with yellow birch the woods lifted burnished limbs like trumpets to announce the shiny hour. All some of the sounds will be as love those speeds impulsive quick pronouncements of the young only the hobbyist pleads a reckoning. The sliders trails of sled roads out of the lamplit town could take us away to a night on the rails of fire with moonlight toward the horizon. Grossly trees until shadows feigning a forest or ghoulish shapes turned us around to contemplate the expanse of slighting field and the far away town we were falling stars raining above the white homes and the steeples

while a greater darkness fell. I conjured sometimes by the broad hand of a cloud The trim the wick of the flickering moon with clumsy shears. Then our sleds had wings. We were more than dances held by the winds music and the spell of the world's whiteness. We rode on trails of light from clouded Pinnacle's. We saw it like birds back to familiar valleys and only in that final resting did we touch the ground. After Candlemas day went or kicks Dolly in the slack and heart beats of the sound of squirrels slim claws carry their hollow tree less than a sack wind in the branches dollars as it trims old sticks and the warm garnish of winter away and

spring loosens all the tightness of the war time beats a countermeasure in the precise dripping of icicles along limbs and in all the intricate clockwork that turns a season under the changing pressure of his barometric blood. A squirrel has good reason to arm Curry and point Aquino's towards his little hole to smell not brown earth again under the receding snows half around us from his sleep he sees a bright eyed staring at him and draws backward momentarily in fright then gaining in strength he advances and inch toward Orion and matches that gaze until at length a cloud passes over and his danger is gone for this night. His eyes close coils him

again into a fairy he made the moon rise over the changing here all. Jewels went out if there were a lot of apples any year the winter would be short. Hold your head sad. So if you're on it he'd never draw the horse rate again. And any sort of lamb would be if she had it wouldn't pay to put the wagon in with spring. Hiding right behind the hill he just Annie hitch it near the empty pond and leave it there for the brief snows to fail. In any year the Apple showed good signs. Here's what she had would be filled to last and how it would help to warn him he might be cold he quote his apple wisdom with the law. If there were lots of apples and a year he had one job to finish without

rest together every apple through his bin and in good time to get the cider pressed with barrels early fails the bung secure. Let her calm let others look to woes. He will be warm and when he would be short. Spring would come by gold pitcher falls. To swallow too soon returning. Lets fall a white feather there from his silver wings far up in the weather mirrored in Gratiot clouds the prismatic sun blazes icicle grasses colors each one here is succulent somehow profuse on the scene late spring used in delicate fern fur but are green at the gathering of the grip of the winter now holds one

blaze and leaf lacquered bower. But three legged door sea wall though deep in February snow searching uncertainly halfway to spring. Even old powers were strange. She tripped and fell all trembling here as in all fields she knew the swifter herby had cleared this orchard to its outer rim. There was the warming wind and yet it seemed her longing rose and loosed one frozen apple from the empty limbs. The log was Sunday home

he asked her to be careful on this day one pail of water was enough to bring. You will hurt yourself by hurrying he said to fall brimming buckets from the spring. Kindly help her through the narrow door he'd school one clear cool dip or fall to drain making a show of it draining it that not one crisp will be wasted in a scene feeling her need for him in his own way. He checked to see if all of wood was burned that kept the family warm on winter nights from heaps of icy slabs as she had learned this day. For once he asked about the saw. He filed and set the key. The best he could. Well having her try that it drop across the way she liked it best for a frozen word for such a day. He did not asked to sit and talk with playing

children all about the early evening lamp was scarcely lift the beds were made and the dim light put out. You never shall enter the soundless wood beyond where one Lee following Bill's Hill long. A wave of polls that stirs the sudden drum of partridges or prompts us through a cry of the bluejays call. You never I shall enter the muted wood beyond where snowflakes whispering Keech laden boughs the gentle speech where when confined by frosty twigs conspired to make the hemlocks creak. You never shall end of the peaceful wood beyond where our eyes of sentinels and down the hill side where you stray you

never shall climb by a hidden way. For none known to the secret hero you never show and of a silent wood beyond where padded whom deer leap down the flower beds of spring and snow upon the greening Mons sings down the silver sluice of streams. New small village burdened with the weight of strong labors in the clock tick of the hour of midnight lanterns burned toward dawn diesels adjust their instruments and young ones moan as snow plows lift the night upon their wings. Morning will find a new snow resting here. The busy homes will

turn to usual things. Meals but chores yet in every house. Voices now and knowing smiles and tiptoe steps that would not wake a child. When spring is early. Snowflakes are stardust falling on her eyes yet waking from her dream she sees the fire of sunlight green in the crystal grass she sees the frost burn in the darkness of the bowels all Belle's the icy branches chime the hour she hears the far off drone of summarize the rush of streams. She sees the blue wings the waltz stirs on the curtain of the haze the slow wakes within the amber wood the willow steals the yellow of the sun the

maple warms with red and on the hero the orchard bears a white cloud in its limbs. MOS He borrowed silence from the silver cold that froze the pliant stream and hushed its voice leaving the stare of ice. He borrowed patience from the season's pose that all was well below roots in the ground and Earth's crust knew the nervous swell of spring from harvesting. He learned the mines as thrift to hoard remembrances against lone days and hungering could be heroes. His faith was as the sun was in the seed that out of darkness something moved to light that some and nurtures both

the flower and the weed. The prove it is said if you go by Memorial High on an all out night of wind and snow will when the time draws near the approximate hour that the all numb year stumbles back to its zero when jaws of the coal gripped the earth like a vice it is sad on such nights other cracks in the ice out of mounds on the ground out of hollows of trees there gathers a force so strong that it can for a rather short time be range the mind of any who pass a man about town forcefully spoke of the rumors as false that the whole affair was a stupendous joke and purposely put the sayings to tast.

So eager he was to prove them a jest that he ran to the white hardly dressed for the cold in the way that he locked was a fright in itself. Then he lay down on a visible mound to prove so he said just once and for all that nothing strange came up from the ground. Further to discount the sayings in please his own name for detail he climbs several trees that Roll Hall though he was too large to get inside of these. He managed to squeeze his head into one to further His where that nothing absurd could affect the state of mind in that neck of the wood to show that his limbs at that portentous hour were as strong as controlled as any strong man's. He lighted his pipe which he put in his mouth quite bottom side then made everything right as one understands when he kicked up his heels and walked straight away from the talked about place on the palms of his hands.

But sugaring Rowland we couldn't wait to plow all those drifting lanes that bring the hillside grove of maples back to us from Winter isolation in snow so deep known creature dad has tracked it seems like shaking hands to touch the bark of orchard trees. We tapped another year. We open up a circle of old friends. Our roads invite new visitings of deer mourning will bear us on its icy rails while each day thaw is until we pass Springs reddening protruding rocks and mud our runners press from green grass.

Burke Rosen all of this is done you cannot hear the Brooks song Aisa has closed the door. The still hours are long. Listen listen to catch some note and read your lies buried deep in the cold is the warmth of a voice. Do not trust years that knew some out to tell if the green sounds are gone. They have learned them too well. Listen. The wind would be neighbor now with a rustle of frozen limbs and the crack of a bowel. They have bones are telling fern in darkness.

Stars of ice hitting of branches shapes in the half light of marshes of the first sea bomb continence the first draft of tropical islands evolve in the pattern of Frum's out of Devonian rock. Our first vegetation form in frozen gardens still risin woodlands wings singing in light rhythmic and dancing. The pattern of flight the first geometry the first poetry. On a.