40 Words
...
Nov 13 2013
Perfect packing snow.
The wet glumpy stuff,
which soon freeze-dries
lightens to crumble
loses height.
The dry dusting.
Wind-driven,
in arctic cold, in painful light.
In shifting veils,
skimming clean
across a polished surface.
Snow, in layers.
Like an excavation
in geological time,
compressed
into one winter.
When it was ankle high,
my footprints staggered
Perfect packing snow.
The wet glumpy stuff,
which soon freeze-dries
lightens to crumble
loses height.
The dry dusting.
Wind-driven,
in arctic cold, in painful light.
In shifting veils,
skimming clean
across a polished surface.
Snow, in layers.
Like an excavation
in geological time,
compressed
into one winter.
When it was ankle high,
my footprints staggered
walking erratically
back, and forth,
back, and forth,
the starting, and stopping
the anguished pausing.
Beneath fresh falls, and
sculpted drifts
past lives persist,
like frozen tracks
of ancient fossils.
In spring
when all my paths emerge;
the comings, and goings,
the stumbled strandings
in knee-deep snow.
Where a snowman, sagging
tips toward the sun.
And I am where I began
in this off-again thaw.
Perfect packing snow,
where giddy children
are falling backwards, fanning arms.
In their mock battalions,
making angels
making war.
A reference to the notorious (and inaccurate) quote -- "40 words for snow." I started off thinking I'd write on the intricacies and variety and changing nature of snow. (If you haven't noticed, even old snow can changed dramatically from day to day.) Perhaps addressing it to someone who has never seen snow, and thinks it's only one thing. Or perhaps to my own first experience; vanished from memory, but still imagined.
Instead, the poem took on a tone of wistful regret. I think it conveys a sense of purposelessness and indecision; has an air of futility in a life that feels more like unresolved circling than progress. It alludes to things badly hidden from sight. And then, at the end, startles the reader with a sharp revelation of menace.
Remembrance Day (I think it's called Memorial Day in theUS )
has just passed. I wonder if that insinuated itself into the ending: images of
all those young men -- almost boys -- falling on the battlefield in the
hundreds of thousands; the innocence at the beginning of the great adventure of
the "war to end all war", and the deep cynicism at its end. And maybe
that minor category of movies about "snowball wars" intruded on my
image of kids playing in winter: how tribalism and the drive to win turn
innocent play into a deadly game; how the veneer of civility is so easily
stripped away to expose the inner warrior. ...Lord of the Flies stuff,
but in snow.
Or not. Make what you will of it. Either way, depending on how you count, I may have covered 7 or 8 of the so-called 40. So the poem can be read as a simple glossary of snow; and at least for those to whom snow is faraway and exotic, I ended up doing just what I intended, after all!
past lives persist,
like frozen tracks
of ancient fossils.
In spring
when all my paths emerge;
the comings, and goings,
the stumbled strandings
in knee-deep snow.
Where a snowman, sagging
tips toward the sun.
And I am where I began
in this off-again thaw.
Perfect packing snow,
where giddy children
are falling backwards, fanning arms.
In their mock battalions,
making angels
making war.
A reference to the notorious (and inaccurate) quote -- "40 words for snow." I started off thinking I'd write on the intricacies and variety and changing nature of snow. (If you haven't noticed, even old snow can changed dramatically from day to day.) Perhaps addressing it to someone who has never seen snow, and thinks it's only one thing. Or perhaps to my own first experience; vanished from memory, but still imagined.
Instead, the poem took on a tone of wistful regret. I think it conveys a sense of purposelessness and indecision; has an air of futility in a life that feels more like unresolved circling than progress. It alludes to things badly hidden from sight. And then, at the end, startles the reader with a sharp revelation of menace.
Remembrance Day (I think it's called Memorial Day in the
Or not. Make what you will of it. Either way, depending on how you count, I may have covered 7 or 8 of the so-called 40. So the poem can be read as a simple glossary of snow; and at least for those to whom snow is faraway and exotic, I ended up doing just what I intended, after all!
No comments:
Post a Comment