Friday Poetry Blogging

Since we here in Minnesota got our first snow of the season today, two from the prose poet Louis Jenkins of Duluth:

November
I don't love the woods it occurs to me, the leafless, brushy, November popple trees that stand around crowding the peripheral vision, each waiting to take its place in my consciousness and each falling back to become a part of the line that divides gray earth from gray sky, as undistinguished as gray hair. Over there one shaft of sunlight penetrates the clouds as if it were an indicator. As if something was being called to my attention. What? More frozen trees? What is it? It's as if someone leaving on a train says something as the cars begin to move, something through the glass. I can see his lips moving. Gestures. What? I can't hear you. What?

Too Much Snow
Unlike the Eskimos we only have one word for snow but we have a lot of modifiers for that word. There is too much snow, which, unlike rain, does not immediately run off. It falls and stays for months. Someone wished for this snow. Someone got a deal, five cents on the dollar, and spent the entire family fortune. It's the simple solution, it covers everything. We are never satisfied with the arrangement of the snow so we spend hours moving the snow from one place to another. Too much snow. I box it up and send it to family and friends. I send a big box to my cousin in California. I send a small box to my mother. She writes "Don't send so much. I'm all alone now. I'll never be able to use so much." To you I send a single snowflake, beautiful, complex and delicate; different from all the others.