Zen Snowman
(with apologies to Wallace Stevens)
One must have a mind of winter
to visit the Botanical Garden in winter
and not to come in out of the cold,
but to sit on a bench in that late, pasty light,
alone by a pond that even the ducks have fled,
cattails lolling knife-bright tongues of ice,
hoar frost bearding a wizened rose
and to feel no wonder for the fire of life
still flickering
below the ground, smoldering eyeless,
hidden at the roots of things,
dozing fitfully through moons of heavy weather,
not even waiting for the spring
—the now inconceivable spring—just sitting there
unflinching with nothing that is not there
and the Nothing that is.
Richard Schiffman is an environmental reporter, poet, and author of two biographies based in New York City. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.