The Snow-Shower

Tsuchiya Koitsu

The Snow-Shower

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, 

   On the lake below, thy gentle eyes;

The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, 

   And dark and silent the water lies;

And out of that frozen mist the snow 

In wavering flakes begins to flow;

                            Flake after flake 

They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come 

   From the chambers beyond that misty veil;

Some hover awhile in air, and some 

   Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.

All, dropping swiftly or settling slow, 

Meet, and are still in the depths below;

                            Flake after flake 

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud, 

   Come floating downward in airy play,

Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd 

   That whiten by night the milky way;

There broader and burlier masses fall; 

The sullen water buries them all–

                            Flake after flake–

All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide 

   From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray,

Are joined in their fall, and, side by side, 

   Come clinging along their unsteady way;

As friend with friend, or husband with wife, 

Makes hand in hand the passage of life;

                            Each mated flake 

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste 

   Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

As, myriads by myriads madly chased, 

They fling themselves from their shadowy height.

   The fair, frail creatures of middle sky, 

What speed they make, with their grave so nigh;

                            Flake after flake, 

To lie in the dark and silent lake!

I see in thy gentle eyes a tear; 

   They turn to me in sorrowful thought;

Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, 

   Who were for a time, and now are not;

Like these fair children of cloud and frost, 

That glisten a moment and then are lost,

                            Flake after flake–

All lost in the dark and silent lake.

Yet look again, for the clouds divide; 

   A gleam of blue on the water lies;

And far away, on the mountain-side, 

   A sunbeam falls from the opening skies,

But the hurrying host that flew between 

The cloud and the water, no more is seen;

                            Flake after flake, 

At rest in the dark and silent lake.

William Cullen Bryant

 

To pause and notice all the various qualities of a thing, its appearance, its effect, the way it calls to mind other beings and ideas - how often do we slow down enough to do this? And how much of life do we miss because we skim over and through it? A poem like this one shows me how little practice I have in savoring life. The way Bryant takes his time, turns his rhyme so thoughtfully, moves so mesmerically through them, makes me want to do the same. Appreciation and poetry take time. I need to re-learn how to take my time.

Summer

Eero Järnefelt

Summer

Voluptuous in plenty, summer is

Neglectful of the earnest ones who've sought her.

She best resides with what she images:

Lakes windless with profound sun-shafted water;

Dense orchards in which high-grassed heat grows thick;

The one-lane country road where, on his knees,

A boy initials soft tar with a stick;

Slow creeks which bear flecked light through depths of trees.

And he alone is summer's who relents

In his poor enterprisings; who can sense,

In alleys petal-blown, the wealth of chance;

Or can, supine in a deep meadow, pass

Warm hours beneath a moving sky's expanse,

Chewing the sweetness form long stalks of grass.

Timothy Steele

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

The line, "summer is neglectful of the earnest ones who've sought her." has given me some pause. Who would that be? Is it the gardeners and farmers to whom summer means the unfolding of their careful plans? Or the person to whom summer signifies the reaching of a goal? That word "sought" seems to infer pursuit. "She best resides with what she images." The word "Image" turned into a verb throws me off. Could it mean that she is in harmony with the one who simply takes in the scenes where she lives? She who is a fullness, an abundance, a generous outpouring, a flourishing, a multiplication, addition (Ha! Take that, Jay Parini, no subtraction here!), an expansion of everything - she smiles at our paltry plans, our miserly notions of Accomplishment, and flings her extravagance in our faces. Flowersflowersflowersleavesleavesleavesfruitfruitfruitfoodfoodfoodfoodand BeautyBeautyBeauty. What accomplishment is greater than this? Let's throw away our lesser goals. Let's lay down in a deep meadow and watch the parade of clouds. Let's be summer's children in her kingdom of bounty.

(And yes, I included this poem mainly because it's about lying down in the grass, one of the great pleasures of life. And here's another poem about it too,  "Silent Noon", by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.)

Night Sounds

Brent Cotton

Night Sounds


And now the dark comes on, all full of chitter noise.

Birds huggermugger crowd the trees,

the air thick with their vesper cries,

and bats, snub seven-pointed kites,

skitter across the lake, swing out,

squeak, chirp, dip, and skim on skates

of air, and the fat frogs wake and prink

wide-lipped, noisy as ducks, drunk

on the bloozy black, gloating chink-chunk.



And now on the narrow beach we defend ourselves from  dark.

The cooking done, we build our firework

bright and hot and less for outlook

than for magic, and lie in our blankets

while night nickers around us. Crickets

chorus hallelujahs; paws, quiet

and quick as raindrops, play on the stones

expertly soft, run past and are gone;

fish pulse in the lake; the frogs hoarsen.



Now every voice of the hour -- the known,

the supposed, the strange,

the mindless, the witted, the never seen --

sing, thrum, impinge, and rearrange

endlessly; and debarred from sleep we wait

for the birds, importantly silent,

for the crease of first eye-licking light,

for the sun, lost long ago and sweet.

By the lake, locked black away and tight,

we lie, day creatures, overhearing night.



Maxine Kumin

“And now the dark comes on”, a change takes place, mysterious nocturnal creatures invade our once familiar daylight world.  Kumin prefaces each stage with "and now", "and now", "now". It's as if we are the audience for a performance of  the night orchestra. Under cover of darkness it sings, thrums, nickers, chirps, squeaks, prinks  - and every hour has a voice, a part in the chorus. Notice how the people build their fire "less for outlook than for magic", I love that. Isn't that what we build fires for mostly while camping, or evenings in the back yard - sure, we need warmth and food and light, but we also need magic. This poem reminds me of the drama of darkness, how it gives us mystery and music and a sense of familiar things becoming strange, of the known changing form and becoming new. Sometimes we don't recognize the wonder in front of us until we observe it from a different point of view. Sometimes we need the dark to show us what we have never seen.