Snow Poems

There is something about teaching freshmen that I like to believe keeps me young. This past week they dazzled me with their wonder over poetry; I felt the years slough off as they read and listened, star-eyed, to poems. I am a skeptic when it comes to other people and poetry. I don't generally believe they will want to enjoy it or will even try. At least, I know I didn't until after years of studying it. But I watched these students read poem after poem for the joy of it during class, and I felt as though I might burst. I felt the same thing a week earlier when they workshopped each others' poems, and wrote little sayings such as "I love whoever wrote this poem. I wonder why you didn't use any commas." I'm not making this up: they responded to each others' poems with an outpouring of love. That is the magic of poetry.

I think, sometimes, it is a lonely business, loving words and particularly poems. I suppose it's a bit like being a mathematician and loving theorems.

It is snowing in Nashville today. Here are two snow poems, the first of which a student found and read in class last week:

"Dust of Snow" by Robert Frost

"The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

"Walking Home from Oak-Head" by Mary Oliver

There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon


that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home - whenever -


somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,


or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,


for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.


Wherever else I live --
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply


in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,


which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,


I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered with stars.