Passer in the Storm

[David W. Parsley]

1.

Wyoming night. Snow fouls purely

sight, speech, with a luster of dying.

From smokeless abandoned cabins, back

into foothills, forests frail

with loss of breath or flying things,

yield like the doe’s last slip into shelter

to the will of the blizzard. Across

that silent country vast with a sense

of shift into memory, towns

submerge in the vanishing landscape,

thoughts feebly meshed through impassable

roads the man still at work must return by.

Streetlights float like shepherd moons

above the spectacle of burying.

From those blistering halos, trees

fall house after house, branches tailing

at edges of fields the windowed face

may watch for a storm-time, borders swung

by singing fence lines, barbed, brilliant.

Beyond them the great sheets gather

and pass like the stride of giants,

meet and dissolve, blow blindly into

juniper, sage, bluff and butte

piloting stone into air. Falling

like a wing through light, the man

will return, squinting raw cheeks through

all the miles that he must, numb

hands mindful of fire the faithful

turns to, snowblind, from time

to time, feeding with smoke-black fingers

flame, piloting wood into shower of sparks

growing white to the eye, as blown

white across prairie and tree.

2.

It was no night for setting memory

on edge. In that room of silent

presences, every knick-knack preserved

a flavor of the passer’s fingers, each

face tranquil as God’s

in creation. In this last

of meeting places, death’s dream

was kingdom since that early traveler

passed with watering eyes to the other.

The storm is coming! Tonight!

He had known,

years. The blizzard would be hungry.

Two men riding in from the sage (years,

too, he had heard their songs:) they

would be wanting some vittles, asking

directions, questions he

had not sought true answers for. It was

no night for memory, but for collecting

dark into light. An hour,

he had watched the tables, shelves

persevere like dust at the limit

of the room’s recollection. The blizzard

blew with fresh intensity, shook

time like salt into place. It

was in the room, the banshee

voice of the wind companionable now,

embraceable as fire: the first

small query, and already no reply.

3.

Quiet before light: the night

bird’s flight beneath branches, no

shower of snow to disturb the restive.

In all that voiceless country, no bough

proves responsive to the wing’s brush

of duty. It passes without shadow

to the edge of stone-broken meadows, fails

without cry above the mottled cloud

of their quarrying. Back,

back into foothills that tremor follows

its echo to tree-blackened pools

spooling ice on the pale naked thigh

of the woman who wades there. Great

trees thick with frost: absence of light

passes bough from bough to the ground.

Marble shoulders baptize wingless in the cool,

rise unglistening from that unmirrored void

filling brimmed banks, boulders white

like porcelain unhurried hands will grip sanely

in a home of the valley, drawing dark

liquid for the bathing of the dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

first published in Prize Poems of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, 1982

2nd Place NFSPS Grand Prize

© 2011 David W. Parsley

Parsley Poetry Collection

[eclipse]

this really is very good-it has a different perspective

[Benjamin]

Hello Dave,

As someone who has never been to the USA, (only by proxy, through very many films and books: ) the thought and sound of Wyoming alone, lends a vast and open feel to this piece. There are numerous excellent lines of imagery i.e: “towns/ submerge in the vanishing landscape,” Interesting also that you should refer to the “banshee” which has Celtic origins and is supposed to warn people when a loved one may be dying. There is much to take in from this well written piece and I shall enjoy reading it over again. Benjamin.

[goldenlangur]

Hi David,

 

A well-deserved accolade for this haunting poem. Your closure leaves an impact:

.

.. drawing dark

liquid for the bathing of the dead.

 

 

Thank you for sharing this with us.

[David W. Parsley]

Thank you, eclipse, for noting the originality - high praise from one so original.

 

Benjamin, it is delightful to hear your response to the sense of vastness coming through. I plead guilty to pulling on an old Celtic thread, but nothing else would do metaphorically or literally or sonorously. And the banshee legend is known here in the States, so I think it fits well enough.

 

Thank you for echoing the accolade, Goldenlangur. I am proud of the original award, but a resonance with like poetic chords rings sweeter.

 

- Dave

[fdelano]

David, this is a grand work. certainly deserving of honor and recognition. (Any money? ;))

As with Frank's Old Bill, I have lived in that rough country, certainly later than your description. My flatlands and some buttes were in the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma and Kansas. It's a hard as rock scene, as though any softness would be sneered at. I'll come back to this one as often as possible. It also brought back my grandfather's wake with a block of ice in a tub under the prone body. His male friends and I sat and talked quietly, many rolling their ciigarettes. Didn't intend to step on your work, but this is how I make it my own. Thank you.

 

fdh

[David W. Parsley]

fdh, I am gratified to see that you resonate so well with the piece. We all come here for our affinity for what is unique to the power of poetry - as conduit and amplifier to the power that belongs to each of us to make each poem one's own. Thanks for sharing a piece of your personal owning here.

 

Oh, and yes, there was some money involved: $400. That was a fortune to a poor starving student and his wife, back in 1982.

 

- Dave

[tonyv]

Dave, I love the winter imagery and the desolation. There's a sense of desperation, especially in the second verse:

 

 

Two men riding in from the sage (years,

too, he had heard their songs:) they

would be wanting some vittles, asking

directions, questions he

had not sought true answers for ....

 

... the first

small query, and already no reply ....

 

 

I like that you broke the poem up into three logical segments: prelude, blizzard, aftermath.

 

Tony