First Snow
by: Mary Oliver
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain--not a single
answer has been found--
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
I almost skipped this poem from Mary Oliver--not because it isn't full of beauty and truth, but because I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, if the word "snow" is invoked too many times in October, you may wake to a world transformed by white.
That's what Mary Oliver is talking about here--the power of snow to make the familiar somehow mysterious and new. Trees glitter, and fields smolder with light. Nothing looks the same. Any person who has experienced a first snow understands this erasure--the mustards and umbers of autumn wiped out by the silent whites of winter. The world becomes a blank page waiting for a poem.
Today, I continued my campaign of selfcare. I took yet another day off from work and tried to relax. In the morning, after dropping my son off at school and wife at work, I drove to the shores of Lake Superior and watched the sunrise. It was cold, and it got colder and colder as the day progressed, with a wind driving bouts of drizzle and mist.
I did take my puppy for a couple walks, but I stuck to wooded paths, so the trees sheltered us from the brunt of the wind and needles of rain. In the afternoon, I returned to Lake Superior after picking my son up from school, and I watched a squabble of seagulls drifting above the foam and waves. By that time, the sun was firmly sheathed in gray clouds, so it felt like a coming-of-snow kind of afternoon.
For Oliver, the first snow turns everything into a question--what's under that white heap? where did the tree stump go? whence such beauty? Of course, none of these questions have apparent answers, and, really, it's silly to search for them. The answer is the question itself. Beauty isn't something to be understood or dissected. Beauty just is.
Eventually, snow will arrive in my neck of the Upper Peninsula (hopefully later than sooner). And it will be thrilling when it happens. It always is. I haven't ever lost that childish excitement when the air suddenly becomes a riot of white for the first time, whether in October, November, or December. (I'd prefer January, but that's magical thinking.)
So, I'm in my flannel pajamas tonight. After I'm done typing this post, I plan to . . . Well, to be honest, I don't have a plan. I may read a book. Watch a movie. Listen to my 15-year-old son swear in his room like a Marine drill sergeant as he plays computer games. Or I may just lie on the couch and listen to what scraps of silence I can find.
Saint Marty isn't looking for answers. All he wants are multiple-choice questions.
❤️
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