128th Virtual Poetry Circle
Welcome to the 128th Virtual Poetry Circle!
Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.
Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.
Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please contribute to the growing list of 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions (please nominate 2011 Poetry), visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April.
Today's poem is J.D. McClatchy:
A Winter Without Snow
Even the sky here in Connecticut has it, That wry look of accomplished conspiracy, The look of those who've gotten away
With a petty but regular white collar crime. When I pick up my shirts at the laundry, A black woman, putting down her Daily News,
Wonders why and how much longer our luck Will hold. "Months now and no kiss of the witch." The whole state overcast with such particulars.
For Emerson, a century ago and farther north, Where the country has an ode's jagged edges, It was "frolic architecture." Frozen blue-
Print of extravagance, shapes of a shared life Left knee-deep in transcendental drifts: The isolate forms of snow are its hardest fact.
Down here, the plain tercets of provision do, Their picket snow-fence peeling, gritty, Holding nothing back, nothing in, nothing at all.
Down here, we've come to prefer the raw material Of everyday and this year have kept an eye On it, shriveling but still recognizable--
A sight that disappoints even as it adds A clearing second guess to winter. It's As if, in the third year of a "relocation"
To a promising notch way out on the Sunbelt, You've grown used to the prefab housing, The quick turnover in neighbors, the constant
Smell of factory smoke--like Plato's cave, You sometimes think--and the stumpy trees That summer slighted and winter just ignores,
And all the snow that never falls is now Back home and mixed up with other piercing Memories of childhood days you were kept in
With a Negro schoolmate, of later storms Through which you drove and drove for hours Without ever seeing where you were going.
Or as if you've cheated on a cold sickly wife. Not in some overheated turnpike motel room With an old flame, herself the mother of two,
Who looks steamy in summer-weight slacks And a parrot-green pullover. Not her. Not anyone. But every day after lunch
You go off by yourself, deep in a brown study, Not doing much of anything for an hour or two, Just staring out the window, or at a patch
On the wall where a picture had hung for ages, A woman with planets in her hair, the gravity Of perfection in her features--oh! her hair
The lengthening shadow of the galaxy's sweep. As a young man you used to stand outside On warm nights and watch her through the trees.
You remember how she disappeared in winter, Obscured by snow that fell blindly on the heart, On the house, on a world of possibilities. What do you think?