Bruce Bennett

Newly Fallen Snow

Gustav Fjaestad, Newly Fallen Snow, 1909.\
https://www.instagram.com/p/DKHojJ_uT-1/

You see the footsteps. You can feel the snow.
It’s Winter in the room and in your mind.
It’s now. It’s here. There’s nowhere else to go.

All’s still and silent. What there is to know
is only here and all that you will find.
All’s static. You are stuck. You feel the snow.

You see the frozen pond. There is no flow,
no movement. Nature’s caught here in a bind,
and so are you. There’s nowhere else to go.

Therefore: relax, chill out, enjoy this show
rolled out for you alone, that special kind
no one can share, this masterwork of snow

And cold and ice that holds a special glow
for just this moment, as you gaze, confined
to this and nothing more. Soon you will go

Where none of this will linger. All will grow
once more familiar. You’ll be reassigned
to where you were. There will be no more snow,
no footsteps. You’ll go where you have to go.

Bruce Bennett is the author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty chapbooks. His second new and selected, Just Another Day in Just Our Town: Poems 2000-2016 (Orchises Press, 2017), was published in 2017. His most recent chapbook is a collection of ekphrastic poems, Images into Words, a collaboration with poet Jim Crenner, published by the Dove Block Project in Geneva, NY. He co-founded and was an editor of both Field and Ploughshares. From 1973-2014 he taught at Wells College and is now Emeritus Professor. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. His poetry website is https://justanotherdayinjustourtown.com