We woke to so much snow
the world’s edges had vanished:
nothing but depth one morning
in an age when words were honed
for slicing
A vault had opened somewhere
in the sky’s ungiving gray—
the firmament had brought down its loving fist
to smother our hell-bent tongues into silence
for a poor little while
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I felt I was reliving that moment.
This is a bible worthy image of how winter’s ferocity affects us, but like biblical images of God’s wrath or frustration with human beings’ penchant to sin collectively in monumental ways, it uses something we experience regularly to challenge us to examine our collective consciences–a daunting task as we will always come up short. However, before we get to the theology, dwell on the images–the vanishing of the edges, words frozen hard enough to be sliced rather than parsed, the fist of the firmament. Katy Scrogin is a poet whose art reveals. That’s rare.