First Snow
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an aracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain– not a single
answer has been found–
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
Mary Oliver 1983
Lesley, I looked up the meaning of aracular and can’t find it in the dictionary. Do you know what it means?
Mary Ann – I copied it as it was written in my Mary Oliver poetry book. Perhaps she took poetic license with the word oracular –
–adjective 1. of the nature of, resembling, or suggesting an oracle: an oracular response. That works given the context. Or, it could have been her misspelling or a typo in the book. Good call!