Plow Shear

Posted August 24, 2009 By admin

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP!?

This poem is called "The Snow Arrives After Long Silence". If you could help me analyze/explicate it and give your thoughts on the author's view of nature it would be greatly appreciated! I'm completely lost and I have an exam soon where I'll have to compare this piece with others.

The snow arrives after long silence
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time.
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal,
bears up like sheep before shearing.

The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird!
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house
in order. The hungry deer walk

on the risen loaves of snow.
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust.
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry

and haul it to Hudson.
Now I scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me,
and its body, thinned into petals,
and the still caves where it sleeps

I think the speaker is missing someone who has left him and he can't help but be absorbed in his loss, like he's in grief. He can't do anything about the person who has left him, like the weather which has an order. He feels sorry for the wild life that has to deal with snow, like the deer leaving their broken hearted-shaped hoof prints, like his broken heart. The speaker compares the cold air to someone offering a cold soft cheek perhaps to kiss, like someone that feels sorry for his sadness, and their body is like flower petals reminding him of the softness of perhaps a woman who is now gone. The still caves sounds like a metaphor for graves, which could mean that the person the speaker misses has died and sleeps as in death.

The snow arrives after long silence (It's been a long silence after someone has left the speaker and he's been living in a silent house)
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time. (it comes from space, air, where nothing leaves a record, like earth does)
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal, (cooked oatmeal is kinda pale and textured)
bears up like sheep before shearing. (the air gets fridged, contracted, like sheep before shearing.)

The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird! (snow flakes like feathers)
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house (the snow reminds him of someone who would set his table using clean linen and make the house orderly, but now it's death the winter brings that puts another kind of linen on and uses another kind of order)
in order. The hungry deer walk

on the risen loaves of snow. (snow collects like mounds of bread)
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust. (hooves leaving snow impressions in the shape of hearts
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry

and haul it to Hudson. (Hudson River)
Now I scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me, (personifies snow as a friendly cool cheek)
and its body, thinned into petals, (petals are the snow flakes, the sky's body)
and the still caves where it sleeps (still caves are where wild life hibernates.)