The Child As A Postcard
To the passing postcard written in
the massing uncolored sky, posed
in the medium of ice and flesh surely
my child-self seemed the response,
scribbled head high to the bare lilacs,
a winter blackbird lost in a fragrance
dancing to cold.
While the wind was witching, while it was
twitching my skirts, and its white book
came clattering down with the frost on every
page, while the sky snowed down with the pomp
and swagger of a drunken policeman, did the
heft then of my grandfather's arms know me
for myself as I determined,
as everything I determined
thereafter came to be? Song or catastrophe,
the wide smile of the chimera, or its
diamond mask, the bright white light
of a lilac breaking bare in the snow while
I watched time plow its path
across my life;
not a moon-fair there, not a star to be seen
dropped from the basket of a lover's dream,
only a stillness of snow haunting the hour
of papier-mache in a maundering dazzle.
January 2022
posted for
Shay's Word List # 10
Note: I have not tried to emulate Stevens' style. That is far above my pay grade. But I have tried to infuse the poem with some of his moods and fancies as I interpret them.
Image:Snow Effect: Winter In The Suburbs, © George Seurat
Public Domain. I have manipulated this image.
