Snow Blind
by Amy Small-McKinney
Nothing changes, exactly.
No subliming of elements.
Nothing as malleable as silver, fluid as mercury.
Memory’s body is not that solid.
You have heard this before--
But for this woman, this rock and field,
this blur of body’s suggestion, matter shifting
as she will shift, here, everything begins.
And she asks, Snow, let me lie in your drifts.
No eyes nor rings, dark and marking time. I will be
birch white, I will be snow blind.
Inside this snow, a scurf of birch
breathes memory and breathes again.
Nothing ends, nothing is the sky
and the earth that drinks the snow, and the snow
that falls unreasonably and certain.
Leaf of absolution, sky of gladness,
there is no need for chemistry.
And the snow answers, I am your despair.
Now return to what is real. Everyone you have ever loved,
or almost loved, is here.
Amy Small-McKinney’s poems have been published in numerous journals, including Connotation Press, Construction, American Poetry Review, The Indianapolis Review, Tiferet, Anomaly, Ilanot Review, and Pedestal Magazine. Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Toward Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize 2016 (Glass Lyre Press). Versions of “Snow Blind” have been previously published in the novel The Wilderness by K. Novak (Bloomsbury Press, 2004) and Amy’s chapbook Body of Surrender (Finishing Line Press, 2004), as well as her collection Life is Perfect (BookArts Press, 2013).
by Amy Small-McKinney
Nothing changes, exactly.
No subliming of elements.
Nothing as malleable as silver, fluid as mercury.
Memory’s body is not that solid.
You have heard this before--
But for this woman, this rock and field,
this blur of body’s suggestion, matter shifting
as she will shift, here, everything begins.
And she asks, Snow, let me lie in your drifts.
No eyes nor rings, dark and marking time. I will be
birch white, I will be snow blind.
Inside this snow, a scurf of birch
breathes memory and breathes again.
Nothing ends, nothing is the sky
and the earth that drinks the snow, and the snow
that falls unreasonably and certain.
Leaf of absolution, sky of gladness,
there is no need for chemistry.
And the snow answers, I am your despair.
Now return to what is real. Everyone you have ever loved,
or almost loved, is here.
Amy Small-McKinney’s poems have been published in numerous journals, including Connotation Press, Construction, American Poetry Review, The Indianapolis Review, Tiferet, Anomaly, Ilanot Review, and Pedestal Magazine. Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Toward Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize 2016 (Glass Lyre Press). Versions of “Snow Blind” have been previously published in the novel The Wilderness by K. Novak (Bloomsbury Press, 2004) and Amy’s chapbook Body of Surrender (Finishing Line Press, 2004), as well as her collection Life is Perfect (BookArts Press, 2013).