The Snow Job

The other day my friend Philip Kuepper dropped a new batch of great poems in my mailbox. It was some poems that he had worked on in December. I have picked out one here that reflects the season we are in. More poems on rowing will follow soon.

The Snow Job

The shell laid upside down
On sawhorses next the barn,
Covered in a shroud of snow
From a nor'easter come shrieking
In the night, like a coven
Of banshees destroying
All possibilities of rowing.

But in his mind the bay flowed blue.
Marsh grass stood plaited,
Green and gold, with sunlight,
Among which sparrows flitted,
Twittering busily their philosophy.

In his mind he was at the bay
Where he set off in his shell,
Past the lichened rocks,
The green baize of them soft to his eye.
A warm breeze nudged him out
Across the cobalt blue water,
A cold blue glove of which covered his hand
When he dipped it into the current.

But it was the white streaks of daylight reflected
In the bay in his imagination
That reminded him of the snow he sought to forget,
Shattering his reverie.
Now in the winter quiet of his house,
With the shell snow-shrouded out next the barn,
He remembered summer,
And the wafer sun rising in the chalice sky.

Philip Kuepper
(December 2010)