Tuesday Poem: “North”
North
homes
white timbered in the south
give way to brown-red
in mid and north –
avenues of birch trees
serried lakes
an elk
runs through deep winter
the night train flares
through cuttings –
inferno cast across jagged firs
frozen earth
rushes headlong
into spring – a pied crow
solitary
above a grey field
(c) Helen Lowe
—
Published in Bravado 14
On July 19 I posted on my blog about Influences on Story and talked about two journeys into winter country during the time I lived in Sweden. This poem arises out of one of those two journeys, made by train into the far north of Sweden which still lay gripped in the very heart of winter.
THIS IS SO STRANGE, Helen – I have written a poem about a seawalk near here that finishes with a loan goat – it’s like the NZ echo of this poem, must put it up one week. This poem pushes the reader wonderfully through the deep muffledness of a frozen winter to the grey field and the crow – terrific language: flaring lights, things dark, jagged, lone … Can I read it out to my creative writing class? Two of them this week have referred to lights as ‘bright’ which drives me NUTS when they can have lights that flare – that are infernos….
Mary, I find there are so many uncanny threads across the Tuesday Poems—or maybe it’s just that it’s a small world? 🙂 But I am very happy for you to use North in your creative writing class … North does come from that well of profound experience–how it was still deepest winter (huge banks of snow, -24 degrees) in the north of Sweden, but by the time the overnight train from Umea reached Stockholm in the morning (I hadn’t slept a wink all night so I’d experienced every moment of those cutting infernos) it was not just the dawn that was grey but that first turn toward spring: ‘the grey season’ that is the Scandinavian pre-spring (lasts forever too!)