Augustus Saint-Gaudens |
Late Mid-Winter,
Snow
Little soul,
you have wandered
lost a long time.
Jane Hirshfield
Amor Fati
The way waiting in the dark
is when we’re expecting
snow but we don’t know it
has begun falling yet and how
because now it is falling
and the sun will come up without us
seeing it isn't it always up
somewhere—hasn't it even risen
by now and we know it has
it was there yesterday
and they say it will
be there tomorrow
but today today the snow
is like ash falling straight down
the chimney. Remember
when the man came to clean
the bats out and the crystalized
creosote, like sand on that frozen
shoreline just by the run-off
creek-ditch we’d sit by when you
stepped on it remember
how it flaked and fell
into the water and it was all
fast and cold and broke open
more on those thin shelfs
of ice suspended above the stones
(and if I’m lucky in this)
the old coal from the run-
aground barges all those
years ago-- and I love holding
it in my hand because I know
I’ll never burn it and never
turn it into ash
into seared heat that clings
to brick and builds up as it cools
and melts some and goes
rigid for a creature like
a bat to get what? stuck?
raise a pup? because it’s
a somewhat dormant chimney,
but still…it’s late mid-winter and the casual
brush of a foot or a broom seems
destructive, to sweep it all clean
or if not clean at least
down into the bottom of some
bottom to settle it all the way dust
is settled briefly before the wind
on ice and snow
to pause on the shallows
while sun on our side
of the earth right now
makes her way turns
and seems (though we know
otherwise) to rise hold still
and fall
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