Read on White

By Rick Watson

There was a strange tone in the poet’s voice

As he recited one of his lines.

It seemed a new meaning speared into him

As he stood, recited those words to a few of us

In a room that was much too large.

It was as if he suddenly sensed the place,

The thousands of miles of North Dakota

Winter white surrounding the overheated room.

He spoke the line he’d written about another place,

Years before: “the white snow of the page,” he said.

He stood there, surprised by the true little metaphor,

Surprised at how far he’d come away

From Ireland’s green and wet epiphanies.

I wish he were back here today.

The seeming blank page is upon the prairie again.

I walk in the pasture

It appears so empty and hard,

But it is soft as the white sheets that wrap a dream.

I sink down in the snow, and I see:

The cattail, red-brown fur on sticks in the slough;

The bright, red crab apples frozen on branches,

The bronze-red of the limbs of a leafless tree,

The yellow/red war paint spread on the feathers

Of the small birds standing guard in the tree.

Then I step in the buck brush.

Suddenly the sky is filled with wings;

The blue-headed pheasant cocks;

Their thundering strokes, their bright brushing wings

Dazzle the canvas of the silent, solid sky.

The sweet, cold season explodes and cracks

From under the long brush strokes of blended white and grey.

Colors splash on the ancient frame of earth and sky.