To Be of the Snow
There is a delight in reading two poems together that perhaps have not before been read side by side. There is a delight in putting two unlike things together. Tea and snow and -30 Celsius, for example.
The first poem by Heather Christle really hits me. Because often I think, I’d rather be writing poetry than blogging about it. I’d rather be of the snow, than the one making prints in it. I would rather be writing than doing a lot of things. But a girl’s gotta eat. Isn’t this how many of us feel.
Pursuits
by Heather Christle
It is not that you want
to be the one to make prints
in the untrampled snow
It is that you want
to be in the snow
without having touched it
to be of the snow
not beginning
Everywhere commerce
dictates the shapes
that move you along
that seat you at the table
far from the snow
far from the act
of not touching
It only gets worse
A girl’s gotta eat
And your hunger’s
not even your own
{source}
But there are rewards. And sometimes we have to go out looking for them.
A Reward
Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled
to leave the house and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.
I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets.
Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.
Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied.
But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall-the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.
And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
widewinged toward me, settled
just offshore on his post,
took up his vigil.
If you ask
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.
It was a little like that when I took my teapot and teacup outdoors in the -30. I didn’t expect anything, and yet, this act of goofy creativity lifted my fog. Sometimes a creature in the wilderness, sometimes a colourful teacup in the snow.
