Falling Leaves and Early Snow

David Grossmann

Falling Leaves and Early Snow



 In the years to come they will say,
“They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.


In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.



Kenneth Rexroth
from The Collected Shorter Poems



"The year fades with the white frost."
"Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream."
"Thin blades of cloud."
"We stand in the snowy twilight."

And then!
"An owl cries in the sifting darkness."


An owl cries in the sifting darkness? This is an accuracy of speech so exquisite I want to rave, make an idiot of myself, rant about poetry as an unparalleled instrument of clarity.
If snow is falling, it's like icing sugar being sifted. And it appears as if the darkness is being sifted. That's more than poetry, it's true. And what is falling? The snow or the darkness?

I love this poem. (I try not to say stupid things like that, but I'm stupid!) Every line is an image I know, that I recall from somewhere - an actual experience, a movie scene, a painting? Is there a collective soul? Is there a place where all beautiful memories and images converge? Where you and I remember the same moment, even though we have never met, and live half a world away? Is it possible? I need to think about this.