Another snowy day

 

Art by Lucy Grossmith

Here's a poem by Hayden Carruth

 

"February Morning"

 

The old man takes a nap

too soon in the morning.

His coffee cup grows cold.

Outside the snow falls fast.

He'll not go out today.

Others must clear the way

 

to the car and the shed.

Open upon his lap

lie the poems of Mr. Frost.

 

Somehow his eyes get lost

in the words and the snow,

somehow they go

 

backward against the words,

upward among the flakes

to the blankness of air,

 

the busy abundance there.

Should he take warning?

Mr. Frost went off, they say,

 

in bitterness and despair.

The old man stirs and wakes,

hearing the hungry birds,

 

nuthatch, sparrow, and jay

that clamor outside, unfed,

and words stir from his past

 

like this irritable sorrow

of jay, nuthatch, and sparrow,

wrath which no longer takes

 

shape of sentence or song.

He climbs the stairs to bed.

The snow falls all day long.

 

 

© Hayden Carruth