Snow Falling From Cedars

Snow Falling From Cedars I – Canadian Winter Photography and Poetry

These poems were written in 2012, during my second winter in Canada. The title refers to “Snow Falling on Cedars”, the 1994 novel by David Guterson. Inspiration came from “Thirteen Ways of looking at a Blackbird” and “The Snow Man” from the poetry collection Harmonium, by Wallace Stevens, published in 1917.

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Poems:

Snow Falling from Cedars
Five Ways of Looking at Snow:
1. Åppås
2. Vahtsa
3. Släbsát
4. Slabttse
5. Skilltje
The Snow Queen
First Snow Flakes
Cold Outside
Snow Has No Vanity
Always There

Snow Falling From Cedars

Snow falling from cedars
in the candy-cane-striped forest
sounds and looks like ice cream
dropped from a cone
onto the leaf-packed road
of the forest floor
The wind gently draws
a lacy snow curtain
between the very quiet,
oh so very quiet trees
And the leaves
drip icicles, slowly, soundlessly
while the snow falls loudly from the cedars.

The cycle of poems in this collection is Five Ways of Looking at Snow, with the main idea of using a few of the many terms that the Sami people have for snow. Note please, it’s not the “eskimos”. For each term I wrote a haiku. The haiku is a Japanese verse in three lines. Line one has 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables and line three has 5 syllables. Haiku is a mood poem and you are not supposed to use metaphors or similes.

The introductory verse, Five Ways of Looking at Snow, is a classical Sicilian Quintain or Cinquain (5 lines) in the rhyme scheme ABABA. This poem has seen many rewrites to get to its current form.

Five Ways of Looking at Snow

With no recall of long ago
when ice and sleet gave winter words,
there is much to pronounce and know
about the many milling herds
of terms the Sami’s tamed for snow.

1

White light wakes me up
An open door in the dark
Fresh fallen åppås

Åppås: Virgin snow without any tracks.

2

Your heavy boots trudge
Cracking vahtsa like eggshells
Lead me into woods

Vahtsa: One or two inches of new snow on top of old snow.

3

Släbsát, pure last night
Now embroidered with fox feet
Prim pairs of stitches

Släbsát: Snow lying on the ground with animal or human footprints.

4

Slabttse sadly drips
Dirt on a pretty girl’s face
Shows in the slow melt

Slabttse: Falling rain mixed with snow, showing the ground in patches.

5

 On the trees, skilltje
Delicate brooches of ice
Woven in branches


 Emerald foliage
Sparkles like jewels in the sun
On the white-cloaked path

Skilltje: Lumps of snow and ice attached to objects, reindeer moss and trees.

The Snow Queen

In a palace of ice lived the snow queen -
walls of ice crystals, floor
of ice slabs,
windows barred with icicles,
a frozen, callous heart.
But you melted mine with a woolly beanie
and a snotty, frozen kiss on a chairlift,
turning my glacial court
into a sparkling playground.

First Snow Flakes

Look up.
There, you see it:-
A snowflake, the first one,
drifting sideways, tumbling
in and out the light of the street lamp,
like a silvery feather dropped from
Winter's pewter wings
folded over the breathless, waiting earth.
And look, there’s another one…

Cold Outside

Come out and ski, call the falling snowflakes
networking outside on the window pane
holding each other’s microscopic little hands
and sliding in ranks down the glass
to the mass gathering on the sill,
their tiny, scratchy demands ignored
in favour of the fireplace.

Snow Has No Vanity

Snow goes away
It always does
You try to keep it
Stare hard at, memorize it
Put a ball of it in the freezer
Lick it, sit in it,
lie down and make a snow angel
Think that if you pay attention
it will stay
like a girl who knows she’s pretty
and waits to be appreciated
and if not
sulks and goes off
But it goes away in any case
Of course it does
But it comes back too
in its own, sweet, time
exactly as you remember it
blue-white, hushed, and filled with stars
That is the randomness
and the wonder of it.

The four quatrains in this poem have the same “simple”, ABCB rhyme scheme. It has also gone through a lot of rewrites to get the form right.

Always There

On the trail, in patches of shadow,
I lose sight of your slow, plodding tread,
and in panic I search out your profile
against the dense timber ahead,
trying to hear which is your voice,
mid the sibilant, gossipy trees
that may be whispering to me, or
just weaving snow-signs in the breeze.

Panicked for the longest second,
in the twilight, forbidding landscape,
thinking I am lost, or you are,
I see something coming awake:-
A snow-covered tree stump shuffles;
it’s you, bending over your camera.
And I finally see your true nature:
a fixed point in the snowy ephemera.