Here's a poem which I wrote last April about a snowstorm, which
came in the latter part of the month
when we thought that even in The Berkshires of Massachusetts,
we might be through with the winter.
It was one of the bigger storms of the year,
very fine flakes to it, and a kind of a disorderly wind
which made it seem as if there were as much snow falling up,
as there was falling down.
This is about that storm, and also it
touches on the general question of taking leave, going.
"A Storm in April."
"Some winters taking leave deal us a last hard blow.
Salting the ground like Carthage, before they will go.
But the bright milling snow, which throngs the air today--
it is a way of leaving, so as to stay.
The light flakes do not weigh the willows down,
but sift through the white catkins, loose as petal drift.
Or in an up-draft lift and glitter at a height,
dazzling us summer's leaf stir chinked with light.
This storm if I am right, will not be wholly over,
till green fields, here and there, turn white
with clover, and through chill air,
the puffs of milkweed hover."
Those willows aren't the weeping kind.
They're swamp willows that again, I didn't have room
to say that, and you really can't spell everything out
in a poem.
I hope that in spite of all that chiming rhyme,
I got myself into a pattern rather like Robert Frost's,
"Stopping By Woods."
And spoke that in spite of all that rhyme,
you could see the whiteness throughout.