Sometimes we, as humans, tend to see things in the air towards dusk. Sometimes we feel things both inside and outside of ourselves, which we can't explain.Sometimes we'll pick up a paintbrush, snap a photo of some rustling leaves that, somehow, explain the day to us.Sometimes human beings will pick up a pen.Sometimes we tend to forget about what the imagination can lead us to.Sometimes we forget that life is only motion.Sometimes the motion of language will say what we cannot say.Sometimes poetry can say everything we never thought we'd have the words or colors for. Sometimes we must listen for a sound.
The Snowman
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Winter
Your mountains are solid, the crags
and boulders frozen, and you glow
in this moonlight, in this swollen cyan
of a child’s blind eye. Fog above these hills.
The scent of spruce tips. The absent owls,
foxes burrowed within caves. The bones
of last summer’s fish sleeping in the dirt,
singing without noise, like a broken harp.
And when I ask about the fire of city lights
cresting over these mountains, what answer
do I hope to hear? A dry thistle rustles
in the breeze. The silhouette of some dark
bird rising higher towards the purple abyss.
They say that a storm is coming, that the stars
are hidden in the shape-shifting blizzard winding
through winds, circulating above the mountain range,
spiraling every would-be flake into the absolute,
into the vacant stare of twilight, all before they
are swept up again, carried out of this frozen earth.
When I hear the songs of wolves, when I feel
the death rattle of each mangled deer, I know
this is the sound of every moon a child’s eye
becomes, as he stares into a mirror, brushing
his teeth and spitting into the stained sink.
I know that he looks towards the vacant
stare of his father, who is hearing the call
of every invisible noise outside. And as the child reaches
for a towel to dry his face, he answers
the call of that frozen wilderness:
daddy, I’m ready for sleep now.
