Caleb Greene

I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
morning streets, I point and name.
Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
rusting and crisping at the edges.
I walk through Schiller Park with you. on my chest. Stars smolder well. into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,
the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.
Fall is when the only things you know. because I’ve named them. begin to end. Soon I’ll have another. season to offer you: frost soft. on the window and a porthole
sighed there, ice sleeving the bare
gray branches. The first time you see. something die, you won’t know it might. come back. I’m desperate for you. to love the world because I brought you here.

I learned this poem as a child and it always comes to mind as soon as I see the first flurries of winter. But what I just realized when I looked it up (to see if I actuallly remembered it rightly) was that I had only learned the first two stanzas, thinking that was the entire poem. But there are 8 more stanzas and, unsurprisingly, the poem is about a lot more than observing the first snow.

The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow, The stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down, And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window The noiseless work of the sky, And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?” And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o’er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud-like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar of our deep-plunged woe.

And again to the child I whispered, “The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father Alone can make it fall!”

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; And she, kissing back, could not know That my kiss was given to her sister, Folded close under deepening snow.