In Snow Fog
       

Cedars lust for definition.
And red alders, their fractal crowns
          gauzy, they retreat
and never advance near enough.
Over and over wherever they are
they disappear
and the stars decline.

                      ***

Moon's eye,
          the laughters of water.

Or beauty unnecessary.
The genocidal dead unwilling to comprehend,
          unable to go home. Or music
before it finds the harmonies,
          the drift and lilt of notes —

on the right day, the correct afternoon
          after which it will be gone,
you walk in it and through it and not quite entirely
out - place and presence, a monochrome
taking its own time
          saying what it has to say.

                      ***

Where, when we are done with them
and they with us, where do our sins go —
          not the polite untruths to make a kindness,
not even the lack of attention selfishness makes.
          I mead what anger does
for its own terror that will not be satisfied.
Willed violence, the conscious choice.

                      ***

If, as Emerson believed, earth and its humours
make the one book of God we might read
          being here, being qualified,
then what is snow fog but notes in the margin,
a hieroglyph, one cuneiform again and again?
Collective, associate, it loiters after a night of thaw,
          after a day of gravity and exhale,
after two nights and a day utterly blind cold,
          unlined and de-horizoned
to become at last snow's fluff and dust
          that will not settle and will not rise.

Copyright © 2009 Lex Runciman All rights reserved
from Starting from Anywhere
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission