Tuesday Poetry Blogging

Mark Strand was born in 1934 ~ the same year as my father. Let's highlight a poem of his today, in keeping with my underpinnings of honoring men who were born in 1934. It's been at least 25 years since I stumbled across Strand's poetry. I appreciate his clarity with words, and the surrealism in his poetry. I read the following piece as a brilliant illumination of that moment at which our intuition hits us, only to be comprehended and explored more fully at a later point in time. What's your take on this poem?

A Piece of the Storm

Excerpted from Blizzard of One

by Mark Strand

(For Sharon Horvath)

~~~

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,

A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room

And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up

From your book, saw it the moment it landed.

That's all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking

To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,

A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that

Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,

Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,

That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:

"It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening."