First Snow In Indiana

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

~ Garage Lights ~
Waiting for Gerry's return from the Indianapolis Airport
When it snowed two weeks ago, on Halloween, I could have sworn it was the first time in my life that I've ever seen snow in October. Having lived in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana -- well, those are not the States where one sees snow in October, not even on the last day!

Snow on Halloween? In Indiana?
When half the backyard is still green? Well, I never!

Then along came yesterday's snow, on my sister Peggy's birthday, and even that seemed too early. Have I ever seen snow on her birthday before? I don't think so! I don't care if it is the second week of November, that's just too soon! I decided to check out the Indiana Climate Archives, which informed me that there had indeed been "measurable" snowfall in Indiana on October 18, 1989. What?! I actually lived in Indiana on that day, but I have no memory of such! Oh, if only I'd been recording weather lore in my journal back then. But alas. Well, this time, I took plenty of pictures:

I love my friend Dana Hall's description of this eerie, early snow:
"Exciting but a little surreal and scary, right?"
The pumpkins are an added bonus!

Several friends noted how much we might have enjoyed this snow back when we were seven years old! But at fifty - seven, it's a mixed blessing. On their Christmas Portrait, the Carpenters provide a light - hearted reminiscence:

Oh the first snowfall of the winter
Was a day that we all waited for . . .

Oh the first snowfall of the winter
What a joy for a boy to behold . . .

It's the good old sentimental season . . .
When a man becomes a boy once again . . .

Music by Joseph F. "Sonny" Burke (1914 - 80)
Lyrics by Paul Francis Webster (1907 - 84)

With Veterans Day so recently past, my thoughts turned to the snowy battle scene depicted by poet Richard Wilbur in "First Snow in Alsace." The World War II night guard in Wilbur's poem "becomes a boy once again," in more somber circumstances than the Carpenter tune describes, but with equal joy. He boasts warmly that "He was the first to see the snow." Seen through through "the new air white and fine," even the war - torn surroundings have been magically transformed by the first snow that falls indiscriminately, innocently, neutrally.

In fact, it hasn't been all that long ago since the young soldier was a child himself, playing in the snow. His daydreams of youthful winters take him -- not fifty years -- but a mere "Ten first - snows back in thought":

First Snow in Alsace
The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it did not know they'd changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

The ration stacks are milky domes;
Across the ammunition pile
The snow has climbed in sparkling combs.

You think: beyond the town a mile
Or two, this snowfall fills the eyes
Of soldiers dead a little while.

Persons and persons in disguise,
Walking the new air white and fine,
Trade glances quick with shared surprise.

At children's windows, heaped, benign,
As always, winter shines the most,
And frost makes marvelous designs.

The night guard coming from his post,
Ten first-snows back in thought, walks slow
And warms him with a boyish boast:

He was the first to see the snow.

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

Addional Connections
1. Here is another poem that takes the reader on an absolutely beautiful walk in newly fallen snow. Whereas Wilbur is crossing Alsace, "Walking the new air white and fine," Wylie walks elegantly "In a soundless space . . . through the still town / In a windless space":

Velvet Shoes
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Elinor Morton Wylie (1885 - 1928)

2. In "The Arrested Artistry of Elinor Wylie," editor John G. Rodwan, Jr. observes that Wylie's poetry has been compared to that of Richard Wilbur and that she was devoted to the life and work of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

3. I don't know if this poem about the mutability of art and love was one of Wylie's favorites, but it's one of mine. It lacks the hope of Wilbur's "First Snow in Alsace," but shares a similar sense of human frailty, endurance, and irrevocable loss, complete with seasonal imagery of falling leaves, and cold wind:

When the Lamp is Shattered
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute-
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
[see also "Ozymandias" & "Ode to the West Wind"]

4. Another blogger makes a connection between "When the Lamp is Shattered" and Wilbur's haunting Christmas hymn "A Stable Lamp is Lighted".
[See also "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"]

5.StoryPeople always gets it right! Thanks Brian Andreas!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Winnow the Dreams

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Sun and Wind on the Roof, 1915
John French Sloan, 1871 - 1951

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.

Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.

The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance."

by Richard Wilbur

Click to hear poet Richard Wilbur read this amazing poem
and explain how he was inspired by the idea of the floating laundry.

Another painting by artisit John French Sloan ~ also inspired by laundry!
Red Kimono on the Roof, 1912

See also:
1. additional perspectives on Wilbur's poem
2. interesting blog post on "Love Calls Us"
3. clever little analysis for beginners

And a few more connections:
1. Contemporary poet, Barbara Kunz Loots describes the tension between possibility and duty with elegant simplicity. For her the "infinite possibilities" are "delicate grain" and the "infinite duties" are "the plain bread of day."

Waking
How hard it is to winnow the dreams from waking,
To watch the gold illusion drift away
And turning to the delicate grain of morning
Grind it into the plain bread of day.
by Barbara Kunz Loots
2. Last week on facebook, epigrammatist and collage artist Michael Lipsey captured the same idea in this fetching visual. Is it a beaver, as in "busy as a beaver" (infinite duty)? Or is it a groundhog, as in if I don't like what I see, I'm not coming out! Maybe it is not the bright sunshine so much as the it is the sheen of infinite possibility that causes the groundhog to shrink from its shadow and run away, overwhelmed. Perhaps love does not call the groundhog to the things of this world.

"There's an in between time when you wake up,
hanging onto the dream, but beginning to remember
things you need to do today." ~ Michael Lispsy
When I read Lipsey's caption concerning the "in between time," I couldn't help thinking of what Loots says about watching "the gold illusion drift away," as the dreamer sifts the wheat from the chaff; and of the "astounded soul" in Wilbur's poem, hanging "bodiless and simple," waiting to rejoin the waking body for another round of mundane errands. At first "the soul shrinks from all that it is about to remember" -- the repetition, the banality, the laundry. But after a few moments of semi - wakeful debate, "the soul descends . . . in bitter love" to accept the reality of the day at hand. Similarly, we rise up "in bitter love" to embrace each day, despite a thousand misgivings. The voice in both poems is resigned yet optimistic: the grain is delicate, the laundry is sacred, the day redeems itself.

3. I am reminded of the E. B. White "To - Do - List" fridge magnet:
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I arise in the morning torn between
a desire to improve the world
and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day."
White vacillates between enjoyment and accomplishment, as do the sunstruck groundhog (though maybe not the industrious beaver), the reluctant dreamer, and the astounded soul. The vacillation makes it "hard to plan the day" -- but not impossible. One way or another, even if only by "habit" (Wilbur's pun), we accept the challenge of the sun, yawn, rise, go forth day after day, keeping our "difficult balance." I especially like the way that Wilbur's conlcusion can actually be found in his title: "love call us to the things of this world."

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, August 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com