Beyond the Ash and Snow

I've written elsewhere of the fine line between poetry and prose. Patterns of Ink is a collection of writing. It's mostly prose, but even then not always "words in their best order." There are times, I've hit my mark. There are also attempts at various forms of poetry, but they are mostly works in progress. Sometimes they, too, hit the mark--some closer than others. I am sharing these thoughts now to shed some light on how that process works (in my case) with the hope that others may find it helpful.

It was the image of things "burning slowly through time" rather than by fire that made me remember Frost's "The Woodpile" which I linked in the original post. In reading those blank verse lines, I wondered if some latent verse (blank or free) was sleeping in the paragraphs about the fire. So I copied the entire text of the previous post as if it were a marble block and began chiseling away "the prose" (including many facts and details) to render the lines below. I'm not sure that I didn't chip away too much. That happens sometimes in writing, but its interesting to see how other literature (titles I taught in the past) affects my thoughts when I write.   

The title is a hat-tip to Frost's "Fire and Ice;" the sensation that our present is also past comes from Stephen Vincent Benet's short story "By the Waters of Babylon," which takes its title from Psalm 137, a song of lament that basically asks "What happens if we forget to remember." The sense of a "voice" or narrator explaining the simplest things to some future audience comes from "Our Town," and the conclusion alludes to I Corinthians 13:12 and an old gospel song my mother used to sing.

[Click on photos to enlarge.]

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Beyond the Ash and Snow

We had traveled 

to the east side of the state

to see the house--

or rather what was left of it--

lost in a fire just six weeks before.

Most of the family had come

the night it happened
or the morning after,

and being the one  

not there with them felt a bit 

like missing a funeral.
Late or not, a sort of grief
had drawn me to the spot.

Fresh snow, like a pall,
lay on the walk and fallen bricks 
and black debris to softened 
the grim still-life before me. 

Deep in the recesses and shadows

were lines and outlines

of objects large and small
hiding in plain sight...
shrouded only in silence.

Like ancient ruins.
the scene took on the specter 
of a sacred space,

no longer for the living.

And for a moment, I imagined

it had been lost to time
instead of earthly flames. 

My thoughts seemed spoken

blankly to me by some voice 
looking back  
from when things as we 
know them were no more.

"And this is how they lived,"
it said, "...and built their homes,

and 'feathered their nests,'

and bought and stored 
and cooked their food,

and sat to meals and went to bed

and shared their lives together.

This is how man set the stage

upon which life was played."

Coming full circle to the porch

I stepped up to the threshold. 
Beside it hung

burnt garland of evergreen--
faintly true to its name--

still draped across the light.

A brittle string of tiny bulbs

reminded me of when 
their light last burned.

I dared not step beyond the door—

between the closet and the stair—

but it was there we began
our long good-byes

through countless years.

Our stocking feet sorted though

and stepped into the shoes

slipped off each time we came.
Thinking of more things to say,
our parting took forever as we
slow-walked to the car 
for one more hug 
"just because we could."

It was then my eyes lost sight

of things long past 
and flashbacks from

some distant day.

I blinked to see the here and now
but even that was veiled
as if reflected in a soot-stained mirror. 
At best, the present is most clear
when seen through tears 
that soothe the acrid sting 

of time.

© Tom Kapanka, 2-15-2020

When I taught poetry units in a former life (it often feels that way), my classes learned many terms for literary devices and even more than one definition of poetry. I think my favorite was: "Words that don't go all the way across the page," and indeed when poets cross the line from "blank verse" to "free verse" that nearly fits the bill. 

Michelangelo once said,“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” (i.e. "Sculpting is easy. Just chisel away what doesn't look like a horse.") 

Coleridge's distinction between prose and poetry is something like Michelangelo's thought.

There is an implied minimalism in poetry--the assumption that language can be boiled down, distilled to a more potent state, as Jacob Korg said in his book: The Force of Few Words. Even his title illustrated his point by literally distilling a longer thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson's:"Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and,in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity." (My own use of unnecessary words is a frustration.) 

Think of it this way: a forgotten orator spoke for two hours at Gettysburg before Abraham Lincoln spoke for two minutes. The former spoke in prose; Lincoln was a poet as he spoke in "verse" about our past, present and future in his short address.