Poetry Friday: Absences

It's not snowing where I live, but it's snowing in many of the places where my friends and family members live right now, and I'm seeing photos of cold and shivery days on social media. I like the way Donald Justice describes absence in this poem, the lack of color, the lack of flowers, the lack of sound. This poem feels like waiting and silence and, well, absence.

(My daughter took this photo a couple of years ago and sent it to me from her own frozen landscape.)

Absences

by Donald Justice

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.

There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,

Like the memory of scales descending the white keys

Of a childhood piano—outside the window, palms!

And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,

Soon to let down its white or yellow-white.

Now, only these poor snow-flowers in a heap,

Like the memory of a white dress cast down . . .

So much has fallen.

                                    And I, who have listened for a step

All afternoon, hear it now, but already falling away,

Already in memory. And the terrible scales descending

On the silent piano; the snow; and the absent flowers

      abounding.


You can read this poem and more by Donald Justice here.

Tabatha has the roundup today.