poetry
IF YOU ARE IN MANHATTAN AFTER THE FIRST SNOW BY VIVIAN SHIPLEY
You might show off more of your French, recall the color noir to describe the pavement. A virtuoso, you could spout off
Wait for the moon to sculpt the fire hydrant into a statue of frost. Everyone will be marooned; everything will appear to have
about modern art, compare the radiance of light, its harmony to Robert Ryman’s show at MOMA. Pulled from his hands
the same weight when covered. It’s the regularity, the sameness, the smoothness that does it. Any solid color will do: brown earth
by the moon, big white canvas was cold, insistent, bleached of stained life. Covered with paint or snow, sidewalks will have
under the woman shoveling in front of her house on 64th Street opposite Versace, black wool coating a man by Federal Hall,
no muck, no stench, gut of dog, or crevice for dropping of horse to rot where goldenrod seeds might wedge. Flakes of snow,
white clouds embracing another walking on lower Broadway near Chambers Street. Gloved hands mask his face. Snow makes
milkweed floating like voices, parachute with nowhere to root. Powdered over with snow, the skin of the earth is made up, pores
visible shapes you wouldn’t ordinarily see. What could be a car is parked in front of Trinity Church near Wall Street, but it might
filled in like Garbo’s face, forever smiling, forever mysterious. You will never question it or need to find words to penetrate
be a tank with gun turrets removed, or an elephant kneeling for a master to mount. Blinding you, rags of smoke will steam from
such beauty, such perfection. Whether the cold silence of snow is crisp or light as shredded sponge, your soles must press down
subway steps. Inhale, then open your mouth to catch snowflakes, stars that freeze to beat on your tongue. If you pass trees, they
to leave an imprint. Leaving no trace of scent for a trail, you may walk for days in the middle of emptied streets never shadowed,
will bow, bent in prayer, shrubs will be shrouded pilgrims. There is nothing to do. Learn to be wind as snow swirls. Drifts will rise
only surrounded by snow that holds the seen and the unseen. Take away color and there is only the beauty, shapes that might
like bridesmaids, with the grace of symmetry in measured steps two by two up the aisle. Molded as if by water sanding azur sea
be tin cans, the Post tied into plastic covered bales, a dog, black garbage bags or a woman in a red plaid coat curled as if asleep.
glass, curves will have all edges worn. Sunk into a warm bath, nothing will be hard or guttural like throaty Russian consonants.
Vivian Shipley’s 10th book, The Poet, is forthcoming in 2015 from Southeastern Louisiana University Press.
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