Stopping by Fields on a Snowy Afternoon by Jane Rohrer

Stopping by Fields on a Snowy Afternoon

You've obviously been here
   since my last visit.
    and I like what you've done
But is it landscape
   or is it art?
It's all so confusing
   with you coming from the other side.

Calligraphy, there on the contours of the field,
   scribbling in stalks and stacks
   left from the fall,
   are visible in the distant upper levels
   of the canvas,
If it is a canvas.
But, it's the wash of thin white,
   just a sift of snow,
   (or is it white,)
   that erases the visual samsara
   and beckons to me from beyond the pale.
But I can't.
I am per pale.

We've been split like a schist.
Here I am and there you are,
   parallel.

http://tinyfarmblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/win07_snowy_field_january1.jpg

http://www.ntoddblog.org/photos/winter/shadowsonthehille.html

While Eating a Pear, by Billy Collins

After we have finished here,
the world will continue its quiet turning,

and the days and months will pass
without the names of Norse and Roman gods.
*
Time will go by the way it did
before history, pure and unnoticed,
a mystery that arose between the sun and moon
before there was a word
for dawn or noon or midnight,
*
before there were names for the earth's
uncountable things,
when fruit hung anonymously
from scattered groves of trees,
light on the smooth green side,
shadow on the other.

Sweet Talk by Billy Collins

You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.
Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.

You are more like the sunlight
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clapboard house
in the early hours of the morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch,
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby.

http://www.hermes-press.com/collins2.htm

Days by Billy Collins

DAYS

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow

on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday

you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday's saucer
without the slightest clink.

- Billy Collins