NEAR PROVIDENCE 30.1.22

A solitary

snow plow going up, down the

disappearing road.

Basho (Knapsack Notes)

says he enjoys snow so much

he’ll walk till he drops.

Even a blizzard

awakens a longing to

hug the ones you’ve lost.

Author: Tom D'Evelyn

Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Cranston RI and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites.

One thought on “NEAR PROVIDENCE 30.1.22”

  1. this is an extraordinary reflection on loss and desire. The single snow plow evokes being left behind and sets up the image-field of snow. Its back-and-forth movement may call to mind the necessity and plodding mundanity of oxen ploughing a field yet the quote from Basho moves the reader to feel the lust for life that the feel of snow awakens. The final stanza articulates an idea at once personal and aphoristically objective taht picks up the threads of desir and loss as the view has shifted in hte same image-field of snow and the reader sees life differently.

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