Snowy Morning by Henry Shukman

Cleaning my office. Cleaning everywhere. Everything. This is how I deal with things and I’ll be damned if you find me in a corner, shaking, trembling, my arms over my head. I will turn this place upside down; I will dust and sweep. I will sweat and heave and wipe it all clean. I will get down on my knees and scrub until I could no longer feel my body. This is what I need; this is how it has always been.

Snowy Morning
Henry Shukman

When we were nine or ten and used to play
at dying — hands clasped to the chest,
Goodbye, beautiful world, I love you! —
we didn’t believe it could ever really be done.

Say goodbye to everything? A gunshot wound
in ‘Alias Smith and Jones’ could set us thinking —
please please don’t die — or a feathered mess
that had been a pigeon squashed on the road.

Even Divinity class, that final sponge of vinegar
on a speartip. Goodbye, beautiful vinegar.
Now, under the shag of decades, after so much
contact with things, it takes a morning like this.

Snow has fallen, a light crust. On the white field
green trails zigzag where the horses wandered,
a crazy scribble shows where they fed.
There they are now, two statues stooping.

All the ewes are sitting, thawing their grass.
Puddles crunch like caramel. Little snowfalls
crumble down a hedge. The silver-birch
trembles with its own twigs’ shadows.

And under the rusty chestnut I walk
through a rain of crystals. There isn’t much to say.
This is a day that decides by itself to be beautiful.
This field is a bride. How are we to say goodbye?