.

1.
How odd a fallen snow’s fresh reassurance,
Begotten in a winter’s biting cold,
But taking edges off a world waxed old,
And slaloming thought into other currents.

2.
Oh how our minds do wander—even here
And there they trespass on reality,
The scrub of God’s unposted property,
And hop its barbed wire back into the clear.

.

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Stephen M. Dickey is a Slavic linguist at the University of Kansas. He has published widely on Slavic verbal categories, and has published translations of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian fiction and poetry including Meša Selimović’s Death and the Dervish, Borislav Pekić’s How to Quiet a Vampire, and Miljenko Jergović’s Ruta Tannenbaum. He has published poetry in various journals including Shot Glass Journal, Trinacria, The Lyric, Rat’s Ass Review, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, Asses of Parnassus, and Blue Unicorn.

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16 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Winter wonderlands indeed alter our thought patterns as they obscure that which is old in the world and play on our imagination. I really liked the phrase, “God’s unposted property.”

    Reply
    • Stephen Dickey

      Thank you Roy, It’s reassuring to know the sentiment is shared, and not just my mental outlier. I guess God must have whispered ‘God’s unposted property’ into my ear, because it came effortlessly, despite me.

      Reply
  2. Jeremiah Johnson

    I like this! Feels like it has faint aftertastes of Thoreau and Frost – that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall” aspect – or in this case barbed wire. In a way it reaffirms as God’s what some of us have claimed for the “spirit of nature”?

    Reply
    • Stephen Dickey

      Jeremiah, thank you for your kind comments. I think a faint aftertaste of Frost is far, far more than I deserve, though I make a point of memorizing his poems as I can (I’m embarrassed to say I have not read a word of Thoreau). I hadn’t thought of Frost’s line here, I was thinking along the lines of ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’, and kind of tickled at the the thought of an anti-Garden of Eden.

      Reply
    • Stephen Dickey

      Thank you Phil. My impression is that the widespread changes in verbal valence we see now were not as common in the formative years of my English, so when transitive ‘slalom’ occurred to me I had to check to see if people really use it that way.

      Reply
  4. Paul A. Freeman

    Brief and profound.

    My fave line: ‘But taking edges off a world waxed old’.

    Thanks for the read, Stephen.

    Reply
    • Stephen Dickey

      Thank you Paul, I don’t try to be profound, just try to express thoughts I find interesting/entertaining. There’s a line somewhere in Isaiah I think about the whole world waxing old.

      Reply
  5. Margaret Coats

    Stephen, your first two lines bring a clear memory of how snowfall sometimes happens. The winter day is bitterly biting cold for hours, then suddenly it gets warmer (relatively), and snow falls. As you say, a reassuringly fresh moment that softens hard edges and slaloms into other currents.

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Thank you Margaret, I was kind of wondering whether my little piece reflected the same sentiment as your first tercet.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      My first tercet in “Moon Before Yule” describes the new moon of the cycle, almost before it gets to be a crescent. The sentiment in the slow start is a look forward to “sublime festivity” that winter seems to be anticipating.

      Your first quatrain has that sense of preparation and anticipation. When you get to the mind-wandering of the second quatrain, it is real motion and return, without advancing far, or so I would think. Thus the entire piece, in its own way, is similar to my first tercet.

      When I see “God’s unposted property,” my mind is not wandering, but recalling how my dad used to go out of town and chop down a Christmas tree when he could find an acceptable one near the side of the road. No “Keep Off” signs or barbed wire, just scrub pine that couldn’t compete with spruce and fir commercially grown, but it made memories for us. Hope you enjoy a memorable holiday!

      Reply
      • Stephen M. Dickey

        These are supposed to be completely separate poems, I was thinking about the snow piece in relation to your first tercet, granted the moon is a difference.
        Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you as well.

  6. C.B. Anderson

    Your mastery of indirection, Stephen, is really something to behold. I don’t think that this is a Slavic thing, but it comes close. The strangest thing was how I felt when I imagined myself reading a couple of omitted stanzas. I am looking forward to future titles.

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Thanks Kip.
      I am getting the feeling these are interpreted as being connected, or else I misunderstood your comment. I’ve been to the point for over 7 months where I am unable to write more than the shortest thing. Hopefully that will change soon. But I appreciate your compliment.

      Reply
      • C.B. Anderson

        Just to be clear, Stephen, the “omitted stanzas” were written in air and were a residue of the ample subtext these poems create.

        “hop its barbed wire back into the clear” is an amazing line that speaks volumes.

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