Hunkering - Nov 24 2020

 

Hunkering

Nov 24 2020

All day, snow has been falling,

big wet flakes

drifting soundlessly down.

While rain pelts, patters, pours.

Like a drumbeat, there's no ignoring it,

beating insistently

on the earth below.

I take comfort in the silence

of steadily falling snow,

a still mantle of white

muffling the world,

the darkness of winter

to rest the eyes.

The long gravel driveway

that leads to the winding road

that eventually reaches the highway,

so-called

even though it's poorly travelled and roughly paved

and inconsistently plowed,

remain trackless, for now.

No one ventures out

and no one comes.

Wedding cake houses

are hunkered down

puffing out smoke,

light in the windows

and frost on the glass.

I toss a log on the fire

and allow time to pass.

How lovely to be snow-stayed,

when there is only this moment

no future or past,

no plans, rumination

indispensable task.

I've written previously about the pleasures of being snow-stayed. Not only am I grateful to live in a place with four distinct seasons, but one in which we find ourselves compelled to surrender to nature.

And also one that gives us the opportunity to be present: that is, living in the moment, instead of our usual way of life. Which is living in either the future – making plans, along with the concomitant anxiety and anticipation – or in the past – if not wallowing in the sadness of rumination, then indulging in the cheap sentimentality of nostalgia.

I'm always suspicious of a poem that comes too easily, as this one did. But perhaps I shouldn't be. The explanation for this may be found here, which is the short introduction I included when sending the first draft to my first readers: “This thing wrote itself in about half an hour. I think "plagiarizing" myself helps: that is having written much the same poem in the past, made numerous false starts, and now with 20 years of practice under my belt, writing is more like taking dictation than agonizing over too many words and wrestling with an infinity of choices. So it shouldn't surprise me that a poem on a subject like this would come out easily and cleanly, right from the start.”