Snow Pile

Snow on top
must feel chilly,
the cold moonlight piercing it.

Snow on the bottom
must feel burdened
by the hundreds who tread on it.

Snow in the middle
must feel lonely
with neither earth nor sky to look at.

~Misuzu Kaneko

I came across this poem by Kaneko and was touched by the simplicity and insightfulness of her writing.

“Her poems have something of Whitman in their empathetic reverence for the splendor of the earth and its creatures, something of Blake in their precision of insight into the nature of things, and something of Plath in both the largehearted appetite for loving the world and the poet’s heartbreaking death. Her short life is a rare reminder that the tragic and the transcendent can coexist, and that the barely bearable emotional porousness with which some people are endowed is the common root of both their sorrowful sensitivity and their uncommon capacity for compassion.

Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko (public library) introduces young readers to the life and work of this extraordinary woman, whose writing continues to salve generations by wrapping the delicate consciousness of words around what so many unconsciously feel but cannot articulate.” Maria Popova (from Brain Pickings)

Please take time to learn more about her here from Brain Pickings.

I may never look at a snow pile the same way again. Will you?

Please take a look at some of my most recent waggleview posts HERE and HERE You can also read my own poem, Heart’s Center.

Thanks for reading and sharing!