Still Falling Snow and Other Poems by Robert Harlow

Still Falling Snow

The woods are mine now
and they fill up with snow
more often than I’d like.
The nearest farmhouse
fallen into itself,
helped these last few years
by a seasonal crush of snow
turned to ice deep on the roof,
breaking ridge-pole and rafters
hand-hewn almost two centuries ago.
Most nights, my pastured horses
return from the far fields
before I have to call them to the barn.
I don’t know when they sleep
because they always seem to be awake
when I check on them sometime around midnight
after making my way home from work.
The roof over their heads will last
their lifetimes and far longer than mine.
I wonder if they are grateful for the miles
I have to travel to keep them here,
groomed and fed and seldom-ridden
through nearby long-abandoned and forgotten farms.
Field-stone foundations and stone fences
are all that define what used to be,
but they too are snow-erased now.
Every night I count the miles I have to travel
before I’m the one who gets to sleep.
The road home, the distance
through the dark snow, are what I have
to remember, claim as my own, the clarity
that becomes something easier to understand
when the lights in the yard guide me
up the last slow hill, making the barn rise
out of the still falling snow.

Out In The Pasture

Steep, the way horses pray
for anything in light’s slow fall
out of grace, as if darkness doesn’t matter,
seeing in the dark, seeing through it as well.
And their travels, merely a dance,
ecstatic when young, regal when full-grown.
The memory persists in the body
if not in the mind. But it does not matter
as long as it can be recalled, as long as the dance
was performed even if only one time.
Whatever brings it into being is something
I am so grateful for, something they’ll show me
on occasion—but only if they want to—
unlike me, who dances for them
any and all the time no matter where
or when or whoever is looking.
Careless and carefree whichever side
of the pasture gate I find myself on,
even dancing for them as the sun goes down,
this beautiful four-legged audience watching
out of their own kind of light,
out of their own kind of grace.

To Plant A Tree
—a PBS documentary

Mostly palm trees, native
to the island of Maui, where he lives,
but now he can no longer remember

their botanical or familiar names.
They are in a book somewhere,
written by an expert who visited once.

Losing sight of the visible world
means having to enter the one
made of touch, sound, scent,

so, hands have more meaning now
just as voices do. Still speaking
lines of poems he can no longer see

but cannot forget. Almost as if
he knows what this world will be
without him, celebrating each tree

placed with such care, he says,
If I could, I would plant a tree
on the last day of my life.

—for W.S. Merwin

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(Photo: Mark Grapengater/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)

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Robert Harlow

Robert Harlow resides in upstate NY. He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature) and has poems in Poetry Northwest, Tar River Poetry, RHINO Poetry, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere. Or so he has been led to believe. He taught at a few universities but decided carpentry is a more rewarding vocation.Now he builds stuff.

Latest posts by Robert Harlow (see all)

• Still Falling Snow and Other Poems by Robert Harlow - August 29, 2024