Dust of Snow
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.
[Robert Frost, Anthology of Robert Frost’s Poems, New York: Washington Square Press, 1971, p. 240]
Robert Frost chose Poe’s nevermore black bird, a tree whose distilled nectar killed Socrates, and the form of water that’s beautiful, blinding, and a cause of hypothermia to the unwise.
It’s not always the obvious or the eye-catching that shakes us from our existential stupor – that haze we stumble through, blind to the gift of life that every day presents.
We don’t get a do-over and we can’t reclaim hours long past. But we don’t have to lose the whole day to our own melancholy/boredom/self-pity. Just about anything can snap us back to the present moment.
Thank God.
beautiful. Thanks, Johnna. These things are happening around us all the time, aren’t they?. We just need to see–be aware–feel–internalize. This poetry we are experiencing in your blog is an opportunity to wake up, for sure.
Thanks, Bill. It’s been such a weird time for the world, and it feels like it is simultaneously easier and more difficult to look around. Peace, Johnna