Thursday, January 3, 2019

All That Has Gone Before/imaginary gardens with real toads

All That Has Gone Before

January begins….
Where you ask?
At the beginning
All that has gone before

Is gone 
Gone for good
The fallen snow
Is deep 

Too deep 
For a pleasant stroll
Rather, I hurry
From house to studio

Kicking snow aside
Follow my own footsteps
Is this the plan for the new year?
Following a path of my own making?

True it is
I gather material
Make marks
Write poems

And deep beneath the blanket of snow
I remember…
City traffic as I made my way to the studio
…And I remember all that has gone before

January 3, 2019

Words:  January, deep, snow, city, poems





11 comments:

Sanaa Rizvi said...

This is so evocative! I love how you associate 'snow' with the events of both past and present. Thank you so much for writing to the prompt.💜

Helen said...

Simply beautiful.

tonispencer said...

I like the path of your own choosing. Sometimes our path is a battle. Sometimes it seems our path is stacked high against us rather than the pleasant stroll. I like the circular pattern of this a lot...all that has gone before. Well done@

Magaly Guerrero said...

We've yet to get any considerable amount of snow. I wonder (all right, I don't really want to wonder about) what January will bring. or the months after that... before spring.

WildChild47 said...

As Toni noted, you've brought this poem about in circular fashion, revealing Janus' two faces - the door between past and future, with the threshold being the present. Using the elements and the natural world really adds a wonderful immediacy to this poem. And choosing to use the metaphor of having to carve a path is really lovely, and powerful. I enjoyed this reading very much. Happy New Year to you Annell - may it be a year filled with wonders and joy.

Old Egg said...

I must confess I don't miss snow having lived in Australia for over fifty years. It does fall in mountainous countryside but having driven through it on way back from Canberra once have no wish to experience it again! However as it is our summer here now with temperatures round 105 degrees F I do check the fridge a lot! memories can be fun at times, can't they?

Sherry Blue Sky said...

You took me here and took me back, in the same poem. Very cool.

Kim M. Russell said...

I love this glimpse into your world, Annell, and imagined you hurrying from house to studio, ‘Kicking snow aside’ and following your own footsteps’ and the way the poem went from a physical path to a path for the New Year. I also like the idea of all that has gone before ‘deep beneath the blanket of snow’.

Susie Clevenger said...

You are delightfully original. I can see you breaking your own path.

Lona Gynt said...

The path in the snow and the hurrying back and forth is a wonderful image insinuating itself incrementally like a fall of snow and the rounding of clock and the ever returning to that path in the snow. Wonder filled capture of the drifts of time. ❄️ 🎶❄️

Kerry O'Connor said...

Is this the plan for the new year?
Following a path of my own making?

Sounds like a good plan to me.

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