Fat With Snow

Dec 26 2014

When the blizzard's expended its final gasp
and the sky, at last, is clear.
When the shadows are sharp as shards of ice
and the air is pin-drop still.
When the softest white
blankets the earth
and the spruce are fat with snow.

The perfect angle
of downward branches
to bear their extravagant load.
The tipping point
between gravity, and stick,
brittle crystals
a bit of warmth, a breath of wind

would shear.

But for this postcard moment
when the forces of nature are fixed.
When the trees still wear
their luxurious cover
and the forest floor's untouched,
even the thin blood
of a southern dilettante
would surely run hot;
if not in love with winter
then at least come to see its hold,

gazing up into the trees

groaning under their load.

The beauty
of its sparse palette
of blue and white and green.

Cold dry air

like a transparent lens

to the stratosphere's outer brink.

Tantalized
by the horizon on fire
as the early sun sinks.

All light, no heat.

With the scornful hauteur

of an ice queen,

December sky deceives.

The Globe and Mail has a long-standing tradition of illustrating their Christmas Eve front page with a Canadian painting; originally from the Thomson family's private collection (their former publisher) and now at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This year it was Arthur Lismer's A Clear Winter: the boreal forest under snow. Which, of course, I have the pleasure of seeing daily -- the real thing, that is.

There is this perfect moment of exquisite balance when the trees are drooping under a fresh load of snow. The snow is thick and smoothly sculpted. And you can see how the trees have been engineered by eons of evolution to bear weight without breaking (the white pine a lot better than the more supple -- but also more frail -- spruce, which always seem to be coming down). Between the windless air and clear light and pristine snow, there is a sense of impermanence: like a held breath you can only hold so long. While the utter stillness conveys the opposite sense, one of timelessness and peace. Lismer's picture recalled all this. I especially like his palette of blue: the darker blue of the shadow-side snow against the big turquoise sky. He captures the subtle beauty of the winter light.

This poem is another attempt to capture this; except in words. (And in this blurb, apparently one more attempt!)

I suspect the "southern dilettante" came from a phone conversation last night with my sister-in-law, down in Toronto. I inquired about a white Christmas, and I think she was almost amused by this. Which shouldn't have surprised me, since there is a bare covering of snow in the city, even up here. She went on to say that she'd be happy if it never snowed all winter (a sentiment with which I strenuously disagree!) And even we northerners know how "thin blood" feels: the first time it gets good and cold before we've had a chance to acclimate (or, like now, after a long spell of unseasonable warmth).

I would have liked to call it All Light, No Heat. Except that I didn't want to steal my own thunder! Anyway, Fat With Snow is closer to the origin of the poem: the image of that luxurious quilt of snow enclosing the trees. And I quite like the plain speaking of "fat", as well as the slight incongruity of describing snow that way. So I think it's a title that will both attract the reader's attention, and make a good way into the poem.

When the word "love" found its way in to the middle stanza (and in the next, the word "tantalized"), it didn't want to squander the possibility. So I re-wrote the ending as a spurned lover, looking up. I hope this will be read as an allusion to the regal indifference of nature toward insignificant man. ...And I'm very pleased the way the "i/e" rhyme managed to carry through the final two stanzas without seeming formal or contrived.