Thursday, 2 December 2010

Night Snow

There must come a time for some poets, perhaps many poets, when the biggest question they have to face is whether it is better to write no poems at all rather than write bad or somewhat unsatisfactory poems.
I've abandoned or ditched my last three efforts over the last few months, sure in the knowledge that too much poetry is written and that if I'm not happy with something I've done I can hardly expect anybody else to think much of it.
Those yesteryears when I, at least, was thrilled by my own work might have gone but I remember thinking and saying something similar when I was in my twenties and I'd like to think I returned to form and improved a bit after that.
If only one knew for sure it was all over, one could edit the Collected Poems, stick it on a shelf somewhere and concentrate on becoming moderate at chess rather than mediocre. But you can't ever be sure of that.
It snowed a lot here overnight, like it did in most of Britain. Snow poems are plentiful enough, like snowflakes themselves. But unlike snowflakes, which scientists have proved that under microscopes, they all look exactly the same, all snow poems are slightly different.
So, I give you my brand new, less than an hour old, and so fresh and unspoilt, Night Snow.

Night Snow

The snow that balanced picturesque
on spider’s webs that joined the fence
to the house just below where
the window looks out
passively on gardens, white again,
like they were this time last year,
a few weeks later actually,
was added to by more snowfall
that drifted silently all night
from thick, dark skies
unseen but no doubt beautiful.
But far too heavy in the end
for the fragile nets of silk
that weren’t there in the morning.

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