Sunday, February 22, 2015

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




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                               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.


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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].