First Snow by Arthur Sze

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 22, 2016   First Snow   Arthur Sze

A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway:                               imbibing the silence,                             you stare at spruce needles:                                                           there’s no sound of a leaf blower,                                                         no sign of a black bear;                   a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack                             against an aspen trunk;                             a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall.                                            You only spot the rabbit’s ears and tail:                   when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,                 but when it stops, it blends in again;                               the world of being is like this gravel:                                            you think you own a car, a house,                                          this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow                                                      these things.                   Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams                                            and stood at Gibraltar,                                                                         but you possess nothing.                   Snow melts into a pool of clear water;                               and, in this stillness,                                               starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze.            Copyright © 2016 by Arthur Sze. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “One day I was startled by a rabbit that moved and stopped, moved and stopped across a gravel driveway. The poem radiated from that spark.” —Arthur Sze   Arthur Sze is the author of Compass Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Poetry by Sze   Compass Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) "San Sepolcro" by Jorie Graham "Lost and Found" by Ron Padgett "Deep Lane [June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies]" by Mark Doty Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038