Like fresh light snow blanketing
the hill, trees and valley,
the new year falls in a blanket of white.
At midnight, sharp stars bedeck
the velvet curtain of night
or snow falls again, melting crystals
on cheeks and chins raised
to the sky and we ponder
this slice of space-time where
days recede subtle and
temporary as ice crystals
descended and assembled into
flakes intricate and symmetrical
yet lose their individual nature
in a field of blank sameness
or as the stars also temporary
viewed from a certain scale.
At midnight,
we pick a pattern out of
a random scattering of points
of light, name the stars Orion,
Cassiopeia as the new year waits
on the cusp another unknown slice of
space and time small and meaningless
as one crystal in this blanket of snow,
nonetheless I feel the weight, even
though slight, of flakes on my eyelashes
and stinging my warm face, melting
these atoms of hydrogen and oxygen
and numberless as the stars.
This dark emptiness of midnight
yet the energy of the world is
soft and warm like the fox
and the moose leaving tracks
furred bodies in lifeless cold
in the snow as they hunt or forage
or bed down in the night
or like the purring flutter
of chickadee wings I will hear
on new year’s morning or like
the warmth of an old nurse
paying attentive kindness
like a house of retired nuns
like the hug of one who really knows
and loves me anyway
a small child hugging tight
like a family gathered in thanks
and giving like concern
for those we cannot know
or help, but to whom we are
responsible on the first morning
of this new year perhaps the sun
will set the snow-laden fields to sparkling.
Perhaps deep lungfulls of crisp fresh air
will resonate through this body’s cells
to strap on boots and snowshoes
and walk through white softness
with the dog shaking loose
gathered snow from pine branches
and sniffing out the night
tracks of rabbits and mice,
chipmunk and squirrel, mole,
perhaps a weasel, often deer,
on a fortunate morning,
a moose, or a bird’s imprint of wings
swept down to snatch a meal,
the grouse leave hollows
from where they burrowed in the snow,
the meandering tracks of coyote
on a scent up the trail.
All this life in the woods
under snow-laden trees
unseen to us a young moose
steps through trees and deep snow,
unhindered, wet white flakes scatter
as it sends a shiver down its shaggy hide
coyotes may converge to take down,
but for the moment, it realizes
the warm energy of the world.
The moose knows not of years
that is our construct
our attempt to tame our fears
and bring order and control
we think the new year’s day
is a beginning and an end, but
it is only another flash of snow
sparkling in the sun and like the moose
we are subject to relentless flow
day evolving into night
snow melting into spring
unceasing there is no end only rising
no beginning only falling
when I stop counting
I feel the softness
stop planning and regretting
I feel the warmth is this
falling or melting in this
blanket of snow or somewhere
in between. How can we know?
I accept that I cannot and more
and more be in nonreactive
homeostasis flow.
Animal tracks disappear as if
they never really happened
and just so our moments fade,
build and subside, softly, go.
Warm energy (kindled like
firelight windows of a house
in the cold and dark) like
an angle of a snowflake glinting
but no sun this new year’s day as sky falls
gathering again in trembling molecules
ravens traverse the grey air silently
and clouds shift south in
accordance with larger systems
and maybe sun warms
some other part of the earth turning
waking greeting in turn this first morning
settling, sifting in ceaseless time.
Sarah Carlin-Ball
January 2017
(A short introductory version of this poem was published in the Winter 2022 edition of Back in the Bay Magazine)
