A good friend who knows how much I love reading (and writing) poems mailed me a copy of Nadia Colburn’s collection of poems, I Say The Sky (University Press of Kentucky), which contains the kind of poems that help open a reader’s eyes to the wonders and beauty of our world.
In one of the poems, “March,” I love the way Colburn explores the passing of winter and the coming spring and how she draws parallels to what might be melting in us.
“What in you needs melting?” she writes.
“What do you do with your anger and your hope?”
And I love the way she begins the poem:
All winter, we walked on the fallen sky,
walked on clouds until we fell, thigh deep, to earth.
How do you make sense of the line “All winter, we walked on the fallen sky”?
What image does “the fallen sky” bring to mind?
When I read the next line… “walked on clouds until we fell, thigh deep, to earth”… I felt as if the clouds themselves had fallen to earth.
And that image of walking on clouds, as if the sky has fallen, led me to wonder how and why Colburn was comparing the clouds to snow, or snow to clouds.
It’s as if the snow itself is made of clouds, and, to carry the image further, as if we ourselves are made of the same stuff as the clouds— the condensation that forms the clouds— so that it’s as if we ourselves have fallen to earth.
And listen to how she takes the image of clouds further in the next stanza:
Now the clouds are running down the side of the mountain
in small hidden rivers.
Isn’t that just how spring comes?
Snowmelt runs swiftly down mountainsides in small, almost hidden rivers?
Clouds turn to snow that turns to streams… in the way that each spring the world transforms itself, changing again from one form of being to another.
Just like humans, who, like the earth, change and awaken in hidden places that we cannot see until growth occurs.
Colburn alludes to these hidden changes:
All night, down the side of the mountain,
Waters run together where we cannot see.
And again: “Underneath, the earth is awakening.”
And spring comes again each March:
Once more the tips of bare branches
put out new buds.
And in a final stroke of brilliance, she writes:
Again they clasp
their small palms together in prayer.
It’s this final line that brings together heaven and earth in such a powerful way, a moment of new buds clasping one another like palms brought together in prayer.
In making this connection, Colburn takes her readers into an annual rite of passage, the transformation of the earth (and of us), a moment when human and divine seem to come together.
“March” is a poem that contains these gem-like miracles, just as the other poems in this collection contain similar gems.
Thanks to Colburn for bringing such a wonderful collection of poems into the world, and thanks to my good friend for sharing Colburn’s work with me.
If you’d like to read more about Nadia Colburn, visit:
You can read her poem, “March,” and other poems here: https://nadiacolburn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Ten-Poems-revised-2.pdf
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