Lull
Feb 4 2014


In the mid-winter lull
with no fresh snow
and the sun striving weakly
a little higher, you'd swear
and it seems safe to wonder
about an early spring
the old snow is tired,
coarse, compacted
crusted.

It sags over the eaves
like vanilla frosting
slathered on
when the cake's too hot.
Footprints have softened
and lost their way
and no one can tell who made them,
who came, who went
who stayed.
The ruts in the lane
are dirty ice,
where highway sand
hitched a ride
in wheel wells, and rocker panels.
And road-salt stains the car
like furry white blossoms
of mould.

There is a dullness, and lassitude,
as if the land were exhausted
by a long hard winter,
the temporariness of things
made clear.

Because none of this will last.
Because the world is always waiting
for the next big thing.
The change of season
the accretion of years,
the expected rite
of passage.
The future
you dared imagine,
never that far.

This poem started out rather unpromising. It's one of those "glance out the window and write about the weather" poems that begin as a last resort. How could this possibly interest my hypothetical reader? I'm much rather find something more universal, something more to do with people and emotion and personal experience, something with more narrative drive. Those are the poems that usually work.

But I think there are enough rewards here to keep the attentive reader going. What I like most, though, is the way the final sentence transforms everything that precedes it. Because there is a bleakness as the litany of description accumulates. And even in the opening stanza, there is a fearfulness: is it even "safe" to imagine spring? Then, when the poem is almost done, "daring" abruptly transforms everything, when any future you imagine is within easy reach. So instead of a lull weighed down by lassitude and darkness, the lull becomes a brief interlude of gathering strength, a prelude on the cusp of change.

The alternative makes me think of living in a place without seasons; of living a life without a sense of trajectory; of getting older ("the accretion of years") without wisdom or perspective. Winter may be hard, but it's always followed by spring.

On the other hand, "none of this will last" is not all pollyanna. "Nothing lasts" is also a cautionary tale, and can portend loss as much as gain. Which, I'm relieved to say, is a lot more consistent with my usual pessimism and nihilism! And where "the next big thing" can be read ironically, with a silent eye-rolling skeptical "as if" (which is why I prefer the cliché to something more original). And not to mention my dislike of change: unlike the persona of the writer's voice, the real me is probably content with an indefinite mid-winter lull!

"Temporariness" is a handful of a word. I considered the more mellifluous "transience", or "brevity", or maybe even "fragility", but I like the multi-syllabic word: the way it holds up the reader, sounding it out; the way it makes time to give it thought. And while it's a big word in the sense of long, it's not a big word in the sense of arcane or pretentious. I try to avoid language that makes the reader go to a dictionary: words that interrupt the flow; words that are more intellectual and analytical than emotional and visceral. But "temporariness" is nice proletarian word I'm more than content to live with.