At My Window by Linda Pastan

Shared by SDSG graduate, Alfred Krass, after receiving the Wicks "Snow Falling on Snow" prayer sent in an Oasis e-news. Sign up to receive Oasis e-news at www.oasismin.org.

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At My Window

 

By Linda Pastan

(from PM/AM—New & Selected Poems)

 

I have thought much

about snow,

the mute pilgrimage

of all those flakes

and about the dark wanderings

of leaves

 

I have stalked

all four seasons

and seen how they beat

the same path

through the same woods

again and again.

 

I used to take a multitude

of trains, trusting

the strategy of tracks,

of distance.

I sailed on ships

Trusting the arbitrary north.

 

Now I stand still

at my window

watching the snow

which knows only one direction,

falling in silence

toward silence.