Episode 168 First Snow - Arthur Sze

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Arthur Sze. They discuss life, death, being, nothingness, and all the hidden meaning waiting to leap out of the every day. They also talk about how some poems can urge us towards presence and mindfulness and the necessity of taking the occasional pause in life.

First Snow By: 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.