Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Tuesday Poem: The Snow-Sayer


The Snow-Sayer

Now and then
and as an aside
he would advise –
in the next day, or so
there will be snow.

When asked how he did it
he said he could read
between the lines
of a weather map
the code for snow.

To disbelievers he said
that TV forecasters
three hundred miles away
can’t hear pianissimo in
passages of snow.

Or, when news came
of his firstborn’s conception
it snowed, so now
he was fated to foretell
the birth of snow.

But at night, outside, alone
he sipped the wind
listened to the clouds
ran his fingers over the sky
for scent of snow.

Credit note: 'The Snow-Sayer' appears in my debut collection Tongues of Ash. It  received a ‘commended’ in the New Zealand Poetry Society’s 2006 International Poetry Competition and was first published in the competition anthology Tiny Gaps. 

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3 comments:

  1. Kia ora Keith and welcome to Tuesday Poem. I love the idea of the 'snow-sayer' especially as we had such a fall of snow recently. I like the way your poem falls down the page and the way someone is fated to foretell snow because a child was born when snow fell. Lovely. Mythical. And good luck with your book launch this week.

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  2. Beautiful, gently falling poem, snow in its very bones. Welcome and congratulations, Keith.

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  3. Hi Keith - welcome to the Tuesday Poem community; it's great to meet you and your work. I, too, love the idea of a 'snow-sayer'; its weight and weightlessness.

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