January 25: Poetry Workshop, Really Alive, "First Snow Draft"

So, I don't do this very often.  Last night, I led a poetry workshop at the Joy Center, an artist/yoga/writer's retreat center in my home town.  The workshop was focused on nature and animals.  We talked quite a bit about John Muir as the wind and snow battered the windows.

What I'm going to do is share something I wrote last night.  I'm not sure if it's a poem.  It's rough, but I think there's something really alive in it.

You tell Saint Marty whether it's poetry or crap.

First Snow Draft

by:  Martin Achatz

It was always chimerical.  Rain into sleet into fat flakes.  Saffron and pumpkin into clean white sheets.  The change, for me, sudden, unexpected even, as if I thought October would go on forever with its crabapples and corn squash.  Yet, the moment would come, sitting in a classroom lined with windows, learning about adverbs or Pythagoras or Dick and Jane.  There would be a shout from someone in the back whose last name began with "V" or "W."  Paul or Dominic, maybe.  One word that hung like a foghorn with its low, round vowel:  "Snooooooow!"  And everyone would rush to the windows.  The glass would fog and sweat with our excitement.  Outside, a riot of oblivion specks, falling up and down and north and south and left and right and sideways.  Rearranging the street.  Editing the cars.  Revising the trees.  Amending and correcting and erasing all the mistakes of spring and summer. Writing something necessary and beautiful and new.