Spring Snow
By Arthur Sze
A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms.
In a month, you will forget, then remember
when nine ravens perched in the elm sway in wind.
I will remember when I brake to a stop,
and a hubcap rolls through the intersection.
An angry man grinds pepper onto his salad;
it is how you nail a tin amulet ear
into the lintel. If, in deep emotion, we are
possessed by the idea of possession,
we can never lose to recover what is ours.
Sounds of an abacus are amplified and condensed
to resemble sounds of hail on a tin roof,
but mind opens to the smell of lightening.
Bodies were vaporized to shadows by intense heat;
in memory people outline bodies on walls.
Copyright Credit: Arthur Sze, "Spring Snow" from The Redshifting Web: Poems. Copyright © 1998 by Arthur Sze. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: The Redshifting Web: Poems (Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org, 1998)