I just got out of an amazing workshop on called Metaphorical Alchemy with G.C. Waldrep. Basically taking a good look at metaphors as an amazing tool for looking at reality in a new light or explaining the unexplainable. Very eye-opening and here is a one of the amazing poems we looked at... (picture from South Forks)

Snow (by David Berman)

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.



Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I don't know where I was going with this.

They were on his property, I said.


When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.



But why were they on his property, he asked.


I just think this is a fantastic poem! I love the imagery of a snow around you being like a room with the walls blasted to shreds - falling down around you... Or that ice looks like a photograph of water - a moment in time magically preserved...

...and besides, it's really funny!

The poem came from Actual Air (Open City Books, 1999)