There is another fresh blanket of snow on the ground. I have some regret that I chose not to struggle across the city streets to the last of Lawrence Hill’s sessions offered through One Book/One Calgary, but on the other hand, as I stepped out into the grey-white of today with Max, I was and am also grateful for the cozy secure feeling I have about staying home…and writing.
Above us, v after huge V formation, another and another and yet another of geese surged forward and south to some instinctual winter homeland. I stopped dead in my tracks, so in awe of the sound of it.
And then I remembered the Stanley Kunitz poem I used to share with my students in September…a particular line about the perturbation of the light…I felt every zinging line of the poem as I looked over head. Given my blessed proximity to the river, I will never get over the powerful movement to and from the water’s edge at certain times of the day and evening.
End of Summer By Stanley Kunitz
An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.
