We Are All The Snow Men

WE ARE ALL THE SNOW MEN (Homage to Wallace Stevens) We are all the snow men Minor would- be Poets Listening in the distant glitter To the poem someone else has written Far better than us. We are all the quiet readers Connecting our eyes and ears with images Finer than those We can ourselves fantasize: The ‘junipers shagged with ice’ And ‘the spruces rough in the distant glitter’ We are all minor makers of our own nothingness Beside the Great Poets who find a music of the soul We seek and strive for and never find. We are all the lesser snow men Out in the cold of our own small minds Shivering to death in the unending winter of our own frosted souls While the great long-lines rise up in flight And go by Beyond ‘ambiguous undulations’ A fierce parting light Our bare selves strain to surmise and survive.