Sky so blue
the snow is blue too. Is March coming in like a lamb? The first morning indicates it is. The sun like an orange cat nuzzling the world. The turn of the seasons is within shouting distance.
The rhythms of the farm - did they help to create the poet? The rise and fall of the sun, the spin of the stars in the black night, the turn of the seasons. The push and pulse of labor - making hay, shoveling corn, carrying feed to the cattle. The clatter and boom and squeal on hogs on the feed floor. All these contributing to the shaping of a poet, no doubt. Yet if they shaped me, why didn't they fashion poets of others around me? Why am I the only poet? How do you explain grace? Why try?
Why do I insist on asking? The wind is the wind. It doesn't mean anything: it just blows. Does it ever wonder whence it came? I don't think so. The poet is a kind of wind rustling the grasses and corn leaves, nothing more.
A lusty kiss of frost on the windshield, yet a fresh breath of spring in the morning air. It is chilly, but the day is newly made.
Am I morning's witness, marking down these days as I do? Is this record a log of my morning meditations? Have I been singing Lauds each day like a monk?
The morning shines on the surface of snow in the fields, gleams like the wink of love. In Edmonton there was not enough snow to hide the wheat stubble. Here we still have snow a foot or foot and a half deep on our lawns. This is not desert.
Perhaps you are a poet so you can paint these beautiful pictures with your words. You speak of work that would seem only mundane if seen through our eyes. But seeing it through your words it is transformed into images of "lusty kisses on the windshield", and "stars spinning in the black night." And maybe the wind does wonder whence it came, and just maybe it too finds its purpose in your words. Who then, if not you?
Posted by: Sharon | March 02, 2007 at 01:13 AM
Thanks, Sharon.
Posted by: Tom Montag | March 02, 2007 at 05:39 AM