Friday, April 22, 2011

poem for the earth

 Most of you know how fond I am of cool weather and temperatures, so I haven't minded the coolish spring we've been having in Seattle.  Love that this poem celebrates silvery coolness.


 This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.
 
"Lamium" by Louise Glück, from The Wild Iris.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting, conflating truth with coldness and that the truthful make their own light.

    Not quite sure if that applies to all who like cold, however!

    ReplyDelete