Snow Landscape, in a Glass Globe - by Jean Valentine
A thumb's-length landscape: Snow, on a hill in China. I turn the glass ball over in my hand, and watch the snow blow around the Chinese woman, calm at her work, carrying her heavy yoke uphill, towards the distant house. Looking out through the thick glass ball she would see the lines of my hand, unearthly winter trees, unmoving, behind the snow... No more elders. The Boston snow grays and softens the streets where you were... Trees older than you, alive. The snow is over and the sky is light. Pale, pale blue distance... Is there an east? A west? A river? There, can we live right? I look back in through the glass. You, in China, I can talk to you. The snow has settled; but it's cold there, where you are. What are you carrying? For the sake of what? through such hard wind and light. -And you look out to me, and you say, "Only the same as everyone; your breath, your words, move with mine, under and over this glass; we who were born and lived on the living earth." Comments are closed.
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Pauline WestPauline West's first novel, EVENING’S LAND, is winner of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Award and recipient of the Carol Marie Smith Memorial Scholarship for the NOEPE Center of Literary Arts. Categories
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