Spring 2011, Volume 10

Poetry by Stephen Germic

Villanelle for First Snow

Salvaging nothing and awaiting purification by snow
The yard turned to field, the field to junk and seed,
Left to better days, and birds: two sparrows, one raven, one crow.

These days—since leaves took their leave—like smoke travel slow,
And if time is what you make of it then I make time itself my need,
Salvaging nothing and awaiting purification by snow.

When the final heart drifts, golden, secular, and insatiable to know
Then we will surrender to the solemn ways of smoke and be
Left to better days, and birds: two sparrows, one raven, one crow.

Birds not so wise—dull and hoarse—as those long fled the sharp glow
Of winter, who strung themselves choric, irregular, with grim speed,
Salvaging nothing and awaiting purification by snow.

Only these, such as they are, live, it seems, to spite Orlando
And we, like them, treat movement with caution, the signals heed,
Left to better days, and birds: two sparrows, one raven, one crow.

Against a yard turned to field and low gray clouds that show
A northwest wind from which a few hard flakes have been freed
We are salvaging nothing and awaiting purification by snow,
Left to better days, and birds: two sparrows, one raven, one crow.

 

 

BIO: Stephen Germic teaches American literature at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. He is the author of American Green (Lexington Books, 2001), and his poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals. He is currently working on a book-length poetry manuscript entitled Days of Rain and Ticks