Subnivium: A Poem

My teen-aged son is taking a creative writing course.  He brings home an excerpt from Richard Hugo’s Triggering Towns, about the nature of poetry, how the lines first drape themselves on a something concrete and then deepen or expand beyond the initial subject.

My son thinks this assignment will be easy. Now he’s on a deadline: it’s nine o’clock and the assignment has to be turned in by midnight. I want to help but now I too feel crunched for time.

I can’t help you, I tell him. It’s up to you.

Nevertheless, I read the excerpt, enjoy its crisp remarks on the writing of poetry.

The next morning, I’m flipping through the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, a popular Minnesota DNR publication. A sidebar title catches my eye: Subnivium.

I read the sidebar, and feel prompted to write.  Here’s what comes out.  I think it has something to do with climate change, among other things.


Subnivium: "Under Snow"

—A seasonal refuge between snowpack and ground)



This is a temporary refuge

for small soft mammals, relaxed in their busy tunnels,


unaware of the keen red fox plunging black feet first

into the white powder--emerging with a snack

wriggling between its long teeth--


Meanwhile, our clattering cars spew gray blankets

of exhaust, too hot for the season;

ice crystals unhitch their clasped hands

and tunnels collapse.


The vole crouches, naked and ridiculous,

eyes locked on a vast shadow cruising across the sky.