I AM THE UNITY OF SNOW

I AM THE UNITY OF SNOW

 

I am the unity of snow.

I am the melting.

It’s just the way things go

from one state of being

to the another

without changing their nature.

I want to explain things to Einstein

but he’s always been slow to catch on.

You can’t have a unified field theory

that doesn’t include the mind.

You can’t get it together

by leaving everything out.

Einstein discovered Einstein like a thought

that stood outside of creation

like a separate universe

looking at this one like a peeping tom

through a window as wide as space

and clear as mirrors and glass

in a dynastic line of telescopes

but they’re not the eyes time uses

when she wants to see

without compromise

what’s become of her face over the years.

I am the unity of melting snow.

I go the way I go

with millions of fallen leaves

making plans for next year’s trees.

I delight in the crazy wisdom of the wild asters

holding themselves up

like bouquets at the roadside

to the dust and the wind

and the momentary glance

of the occasional traveller

who knows so much

about where he’s going

there’s no destiny in his destination.

He’ll take the risk

but not the chance.

He’s an illiterate

who doesn’t know the names

of the stars or the flowers.

He’s thinks of growth as an advance.

The asters rooting their constellations

like the Pleiades

in the drainage ditches

along the backroads

that have all left home for the big city

like smalltown adolescents

or Canada geese in the fall

are nothing but a blur to him

not sentient life forms from a distant star

that sends greetings

in a universal language of flowers

to see if we’ve mastered our mother-tongue

and know how to answer back.

I am the unity of snow

it takes to turn one big country

into a Canadian

with the identity of a snowflake

no two alike

like fingerprints and dna

and a passport that’s good

anywhere in the world

like water and ice. 

It’s hard not to be grateful

for having been born here

and if Einstein had been born here

among the sumac and the cedars

instead of the black forests of Germany

he would have discovered

his unified field theory by now.

He would have looked up

at the raw wild stars

of a wilderness night

huddled around a campfire

as the forked tongues of the flames

lie like a ghost story

about things they know nothing about

and seen the New England asters

blooming along the Milky Way

like a sidereal bouquet

of mentally arranged insights

into the spontaneous nature of light

when it takes time and space off

long enough to shine

like Einstein’s image of himself

trying to explain everything to the universe

when no one is listening.

Dogen Zenji.

Shobogenzo.

1241 A.D.

Japan:

When the truth doesn’t fill your mind and body

you always feel you’ve had enough.

When the truth does fill your mind and body

you always feel that something’s missing.

It’s the emptiness of not-being

that inspires growth

that tilts the wine jar like a planet

into flowing like a drunk’s dream of earth

into seas way over his head.

Out of the potential of nothing emerges

Canada

like a doe stepping out of the woods

to drink from her own reflection like the moon

when it comes down to the water

longing for lost illusions

that gave up the ghost

with their last breath

like the last gasp of an atmosphere

billions of years ago.

I am the unity of snow

but even going with the flow

is still too much of a direction for me

to feel so absolutely free

of arriving anywhere

I’m in cosmic harmony

with what’s mystically specific

about the creative liberties I take

to be melting snow

and wash myself clean of myself

so I don’t get in the way

of what I’m dying to know

about this huge afterlife of water

I call my home and native land

though everybody here

even Einstein

knows it isn’t so.

Or whose dream it is.

Or whose death inspired it

to lavish so much pagan karma

on its savage innocence

I’ll always see a stranger

embodied in the hills

in late September

like a past life

that’s too far back to remember. 

Psychology is landscape.

Everyone’s a shaman.

The red-tailed hawk dreams

its totem animal’s a human.

The clever American fox

lifts its nose from the ground

and raises it up

like a Confederate revolver

to shoot the stars out of the union

that melts the many

into one cannibal’s cooking pot.

Not like here

where the one breaks bread with the many

like hot blood on cold snow

older than the unalloyed wisdom

of lone wolves like me

hunted into extinction

by a National Geographic documentary

about what it used to be like

unsymbolically

to be lyrically wild hungry and free

when blood wasn’t frozen

like a rose in the snow

of a full-length feature

on how to hunt wolves from a helicopter

like a maggot with a gun

taking his dysfunctional erectile rage out

on anything with a bigger one

than he could possibly imagine.

Blood was the dark incomprehensible rapture

renewed with every breath

that bumped the head against the heart

like a thought against an emotion

like a wave against the great nightsea

that wheeled

through the veins and vines of nature

like an ancient instinct it shared with the stars.

Now no one knows what I’m talking about.

There’s no madness in their passion

that isn’t the bad echo

of a better voice.

There’s infinite variety

but no choice.

There’s no chaos in the mayhem

that’s ever going to give birth to a dancing star

and no darkness in the hearts of humans

sincere enough to see it.

There’s no ocean

in the mud-puddles of sentiment

that are gone by noon

like the hangover

of a cosmic emotion

that ends up on the market

like a celebrity perfume.

Van Gogh would scare everybody to death

all over again

and as he said with his last breath

there will always be pain

and though he was a little deaf in one ear

he wasn’t insane

even temporarily

when he said

in my head

just a moment ago

but look at the beauty

in the intensity of this

shining like Venus

or a white iris

in a vast abyss of indigo

like a longing

that will never be fulfilled.

Anyone can see with their eyes.

But what the spirit paints like a witness

that’s never been sworn in

by the God and the law

of those who are bound by sin 

is the beginning of a myth of origin

that’s not a star map for the blind.

It’s time for a sidereal religion

that lets everyone in on the big secret

the stars have known all along.

Nothing’s ever really wrong.

Nothing’s ever really right.

Nothing is stained by its opposite

any more than the day is by the night.

It’s just the nature of light.

It’s just the nature of mind.

You might be a lightning bolt.

You might be a firefly.

You might be a star.

Whoever you are

you shine.

 

PATRICK WHITE