The Best We Can Hope For

Feb 25 2018

So far, it's been a dry winter.

Although memory, as usual, is unreliable.

The way time softens the past,

so its sharpened elbows, and well-aimed knees

spiky hair, and defiant stare

become respectable, soon enough.

And embellishes, as well,

honing its edges, heightening its peaks.

So in retrospect

a minor scuffle

becomes a death-match,

a heavy snowfall

the blizzard from hell.

Nevertheless, this is no false memory;

because the snowbanks are unseasonably low

this late in winter,

the surface crusted, and pitted

and grey with grime.

And how little time there was

before that first step

marred its perfect whiteness,

before the freeze-and-thaw

left it granular, and hard.

So it's with relief

I hear they're calling for snow

after such a long barren lull.

And feel certain, somehow

that in the end

nature will correct herself;

that wet snow

will blanket March,

and water will be ankle-deep

in another lush and fertile spring.

Which is the best we can hope for,

that things will even-out, regress to the mean.

That the jagged edges

will be smoothed away,

our sense of constancy

restored.

Just as I'd like to believe

in the triumph of fairness, and just reward;

even as the good suffer, the bad succeed

the well-intentioned waver.

But do things really work that way?

In the fullness of time

does the universe even-out?

As snow begins to fall

and the world quickly fills.

A fresh dump, as predicted,

coming in in blinding gusts, and heavy bursts

and swirling curtains of white.

Camouflaging

the dregs of winter

in a smooth wind-swept quilt;

softening its edges,

forgiving its weary flaws.

Shovelling can be a bother, driving even more so. But this heavy snowfall is more than welcome as we approach the end of what has so far been an unusually dry winter. I suppose my feeling that things will ultimately even-out can be seen two ways. First, there's the familiar refrain that “we'll eventually pay for this”: the usual pessimistic fatalism that things inevitably regress to the mean, and so there's no way we're getting away with such an easy winter. And second, there's the reassuring feeling that there is an essential constancy to the world; so that in the end, it all comes out as it's always done, and as it should.

It started off looking as if this was going to be another “weather” poem: the usual lyrical piece that was grounded in nature, but that I've written too many times before; and something with a few nice descriptive sentences, but too impersonal and unemotional and detached to make worthwhile poetry.

So I hope I rescued the piece with my philosophical musings, using the late season snowfall as a metaphor for this idea of regression to the mean, and then for the deeper idea of justice and fairness and just reward. ...A hopeful thought, even if not one to which this cynical writer truly subscribes.

There were a couple of other titles I toyed with, but ultimately rejected: The Dregs of Winter, which probably appealed because – I must confess – I was unduly pleased with the word dregs(!); and The World Fills, which I think has a nicely tempting imprecision about it. I ultimately went with The Best We Can Hope For because it fits the poem's tone so well, with its implicit sigh of hopeful acceptance and guarded optimism. I also like this title's conversational tone: since I'm usually very pedantic about ending a line or a sentence with a preposition, the final For gives it an invitingly casual quality. At least for me it does; even if no one else would even notice!