Traverse City Record-Eagle

Fleda Brown: On Poetry

HOW IS IT THAT THE SNOW

How is it that the snow
amplifies the silence,
slathers the black bark on limbs,
heaps along the brush rows?

Some deer have stood on their hind legs
to pull the berries down.
Now they are ghosts along the path,
snow flecked with red wine stains.

This silence in the timbers.
A woodpecker on one of the trees
taps out its story,
stopping now and then in the lapse
of one white moment into another.

-- Robert Haight

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January 2, 2011

On Poetry: Snow and silence

By FLEDA BROWN Local columnist

It occurs to me that today of all days, right after whatever hoopla we got ourselves into this weekend, a little silence might be welcome. This poem may help.

This is our fourth New Year in northern Michigan, our fourth winter. The first one, my husband and I were amazed at the whiteness, but it felt a bit overwhelming — figuring which gloves are warmest, which socks. We didn't even know what a boot tray was! We didn't know to clear our sidewalk out by the street until after it was too late. The plows had dumped so much icy snow there that we couldn't break through it.

The second year came the Big Snow. We couldn't even see around the snow banks to get out of our alley. It was so spectacular we sent lots of pictures to our friends back on the East Coast: "Look what we've gotten ourselves into! Aren't we brave?"

Last winter was milder, but here we are again this year with snow relentlessly pouring out of the sky in its myriad configurations — feathery, hard, tiny, or wet clumps. The first year, a friend lent me her "happy light" when she took off for Mexico. "You'll probably need this," she said, "to keep you from being depressed." But the snow's so bright, I haven't yet felt depressed. Do I feel pent up, trapped? Yes! I'm a writer. Nothing pleases me more than being trapped in my study with my computer.

Furthermore, I'm a poet. White space is my working tool. It's space that allows us to turn back and see what's there, to really focus on it. It's silence that allows us to hear. Line breaks stop us a little. Stanza breaks stop us more. Slowing down and paying attention is what a poem means to do. Each. Single. Word.

It's interesting to try listening, sometimes, not for what might be there, but for what isn't there.

Robert Haight, the poet, certainly knows about snow, how silence grows more silent in the snow. He was born in Detroit and lives at Hemlock Lake in Cass County. (He has two fine collections; the recent one is Emergences and Spinner Falls, New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2002.)

In this poem, he's carefully chosen where we'll stop, where we'll pause. We'll stop after the question. We'll stop again after we've seen the ghosts of deer. We'll pause after "lapse" so that we actually experience the lapse. And then we'll stop at the end to allow ourselves to feel how one moment does move into the next.

It's a simple poem, all silence and watching. Watching the snow on limbs, on brush rows, noticing tracks (the ghosts of deer), noticing that the pattern of prints shows that they've stood on their hind legs, noticing the red berry stains on the path. The only sound is the woodpecker, but the poem gives more attention to the silence between the taps than it does to the taps themselves.

Which makes me think: Have you noticed how eager people are to clap after a performance? Sometimes they start applauding even before it's over. Have you noticed how quickly people jump to their feet these days? A standing ovation used to be reserved for the best of the best.

I'm thinking we might allow a pause after a wonderful experience, so we can really feel it, let it register deeply in our body and mind. A moment of sitting still, in silence, seems to me is a greater tribute. It says, "I want to finish letting this experience soak into me. I don't want to let go of it so quickly." Then the applause, after that.

Fleda Brown is professor emerita, University of Delaware, and past poet laureate of Delaware. For more of Fleda Brown's On Poetry columns, log on to record-eagle.com/onpoetry.

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