17.iii.07 a

Pencil makes impermanent marks across the sheet
grey on white
like the snow
white on new green, now meting fast but seven inches
thick turning wet with the sunny minutes glaring
more than eyes can watch.
The little pools turn to rivulets,
flow into gullies.
The tracks of the raccoon and grackle and deer
are all wiped clean by the melting snow
as thoroughly as an eraser cleans the page

yet something has changed

no moment is erased completely
each builds on those before slowly moving what is to what is
in another place in another time.

Being with you I think about time
and timelessness living in the moment
and yet recollecting what has been
hoping and planning for the future

I say again and again
all we have is now
but now is all the moments that have been waiting
for all the moments that yet may be.

Is there one future only which ill be
and one past only which has been?
Might not there have been other pasts, if only we knew
and other futures, if only our moments take a certain direction?

The snow is melting fast.
It hid what was, and now reveals what will be
as my pencil slides across the page.

Commentary:

I tend to prefer poetry which is more structured than this -- for this reason I have tended toward lyric, where the need for metre is strong -- but there is structure here, nonetheless. Curiously, the structure lies predominantly in the content: the transition from the pencil and the action of drawing (or, rather, writing on the page, for the reference is very directly to the writing of the words "Pencil makes impermanent marks across the sheet/ grey on white/ like the snow", etc.) to the snow, then the reflection on the action of the snow, the meditation upon time, the return to the snow, and finally the return to the act of writing.

By no means is this "tight". I can think of at least one writer in my immediate circle who would boil this one down to about twelve lines. Sometimes, though, it's nice to stretch out a bit.