The Snow Man

An ill-advised poem written while driving through a snowstorm.

The Snow Man

     A poet was convinced only of the nothing

     that is not there, saying all poetry 

     ought to reflect only that, and another

     poet was saying that the nothing

     that is there is all there ought to be

     reflected in poems. I was sitting there,

     an unwelcome third poet, swirling my wine, 

     waiting to order, wondering if what 

     was unfolding at that table was not 

     the very embodiment of that line that ends

     the famous Stevens poem, "The Snow Man."

The above entirely fictional scene has come to me 

while driving home from Cedar Rapids, where I teach

composition, on an icy interstate highway

that makes it hard  to guide the car — it’s deep winter —

and my car, a Civic I’ve had since college, is tiny

and lightweight with bald tires and frozen wiper fluid

so that if you pass me in your car in the left lane,

your tires will spit a scummy mix of ice and salt

across my windshield, and if I try to wipe it off,

my wipers will smear the mix across the glass,

and I won’t be able to see a thing for a few whole

seconds of harrowing interstate highway travel. 

On top of that, every few seconds, my heart stops

when the car feels like it’s sliding, as if the wheels

have lost contact with the road — and in the middle

of all this, this restaurant scene, this joke scenario

or potential premise for a poem  — comes to me

and I get out my paper — a receipt for the purchase

of the very pen with which I am writing, one of the 

extra long receipts the pharmacy gives you — 

because this is 2008, before smartphones took off — 

and I scrawl the scenario against the steering wheel

in letters and lines so jagged as to be illegible, an 

illegibility reflecting the degraded state of the road

for every time the car hits a bump the pen jolts

around the receipt  — here I am — risking my life 

and the lives of others — to immortalize this half-

witted attempt at art or humor — and then this

metacritical digression — examining a text no one

need ever even think about in the first place — 

all teased out until the back of the receipt, an

arbitrary form if ever there was one, is filled. 

For all this, how close have I come to death 

just now? How far away was I from it before?

What is the distance I have moved? How far 

am I now? And now? And now? And now?

How much does word move me toward one

oblivion? Do they move me away from another?

In the blistering sweep of history, has anyone

ever risked more for less?

---

I wrote this poem in 2008 when I genuinely did teach composition to college students in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and often drove back and forth between work and home in snowy conditions. Unlike most poems that I wrote in that era, I haven’t completely abandoned this one. I keep coming back to it and wondering if it works. I always decide it almost works but never enough to end up in a book or to submit to a journal. One time I read it to one of my favorite poets, and he seemed to like it, but then I decided he probably liked it in the way you like anything a friend might write. I was surprised when, years later, he quoted the last line back to me in a social context that was completely different but perfectly relevant. That he not only remembered it but also quoted it as if it was the perfect distillation of something more universal made me decide that this poem did perhaps say something worth saving. So I have kept coming back to it over the years, trying to unlock its final form with endless tinkering. Now it is many years after all of that, and I’ve decided it is time to free myself from ever having to wonder about its quality again by publishing it here. FWIW, the poet who remembered this poem’s last line years after reading it was Zach Savich. He has a new book out called Momently (available here). I buy and love all his books, and I recommend reading one or two if you haven’t read any. The poems are perfectly transporting into the realest of the real. The language is raw and wrought and feather-light and indelible and wise and humble and funny and thundering and quiet and always seems to find a wholly organic form.