One of Robert Bly's poems is a favorite of mine for a simple reason - it conveys how I feel during snowy, winter nights...
The crunch of snow beneath your boots. The smell of it in the air. The flush on your cheeks. The blanket of white. The stillness and quietness it brings to everything around you. Those nights have a beautiful, otherworldly quality to them.
So maybe I romanticize snow. Maybe it's because I live in the South and hence, don't see much of it. But for whatever reason, I love it. (As you can glean from an earlier post, I love rain too!) What is it with me and precipitation?
Onto the good stuff...
Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.
In my mind when I read it, I'm walking from my home to the mailbox. Why take out the fun part of experiencing your surroundings first hand, not in a car through metal and glass? Is it sacrilegious to take only parts of a poem that I like? lol I tend to do that with all kinds of things though. Take only what feels right/true and disregard the rest. ..I guess Robert Bly not only wants to be separated from people in this poem, but also from the world in a sense. Otherwise, why the car?
Since I included the whole poem, I'll link to where you can buy his book Silence in the Snowy Fields. It's a great read.
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