A Walk in the Snow

My recent walk — or should I say trudge? — through a snowy, sub-zero landscape brought to mind Dan’s poem “Snowblindness.”  

That poem in turn inspired our February video, a tribute to this blustery yet beautiful season. 

Our guest artist is Southwest Virginian landscape painter Kyle Buckland, whose work deeply explores the spirit of the Southern 
Highlands, and the shifts of season and time of day upon them, while also exploring the richness of paint itself. Along 
with Kyle’s winter landscapes, I included a few of my own drawings of withered grass and brittle stalks emerging from the 
white canvas of snow covering the hill behind our home this winter. 

                                                                     — Suzanne 

 [To learn more about Kyle, visit www.kylebuckland.com]

Snowblindness




___________________________________________________________________________________

                               Snowblindness

                       One must have a mind of winter . . .  

Only the red dogwood’s

brilliant scar in the whitescape

down the river

leads me on.  And still

the burning cold’s shrill light

spreads through me,

                      as always

mid-December

when the crust sets hard

as calcium,

             and throbbing bones

might keep a sane man

from his daily 

trek along the river bank

in constant glare.  

                       But let  

another man partake

his brittle glee

unmocked,

           that morning walk’s
“insanity,” his thumping

breast swelled ardently

within.  

    Snowblindness,

the pure sting of heaped

brilliance: luster

of an emptied mind,

    stunned seeing

       in and out.

___________________________________________________________________________________

An early version of “Snowblindness” appeared in The Artist and the Crow [Purdue University Press, 1984]; 
the present version is forthcoming in Back to the Source: Selected Poems and Parables (1980-2014)
[San Francisco Bay Press, 2015].