Friday, March 10, 2017

On a Snow Globe



It falls forever, it falls eternally--
The snow that swirls beneath your canopy
Of world-preserving glass. The elves are making toys
Forever and ever, as long as there will be girls and boys.

I shake the globe, and stare into the gentle storm--
Watching the snowflakes swirl in unrepeatable form,
And I shake it again, and I think of the stirrings of first love,
And the things that storytellers have told stories of
Since the world began. I think about Citizen Kane
And Casablanca, playing again and again and again
On screens all over the world. I think about Christmas trees
And Halloween bonfires, glowing perpetually
At the crossroads of now and forever, tradition and memory.

The snowflakes swirl, as snowflakes have always swirled,
And Santa Claus and the elves make toys in their own little world.
I shake it again, and I feel the joy of things as they are,
The pokiest attic as wholly itself as the furthest star.
The glass creates a world... I think of the world of a song,
The world of a story, a page or a thousand pages long,
The world of a people, a family, every manner of 'we'.
The glass creates a world....through a window we see
A vision whose bounds are all of its beauty, its poetry.

I shake the globe, and I watch the swirling snow,
And I think of a snowy day long, long ago
That only I remember, only I can know.

3 comments:

  1. I like the simplicity of this poem.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much, Thomae! Simple is good.

      Under the surface it's actually more complex than The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. (Not really.)

      Delete
  2. But the simple is the difficult...

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