Song of the Wonderful Surprise by Kelly Cherry

Song of the Wonderful Surprise

by Kelly Cherry

Start with the fact of space; fill it up

with snow. There will be snow in the sky,

snow on the ground, snow in the mysterious courtyards.

You taste snow's tang, smell snow, feel snow on your face.

If you walk forever, you will not come to a place with no snow,

but one day, looking around, you will find

a green apple hanging from a spray of snow.

I promised you a cheerier poem, and here it is!

The poet, Kelly Cherry, is the author of many books and a former Virginia Poet Laureate. This poem is from her book, God's Loud Hand (1993, Lousiana State U). She wrote prose as well as poetry. Cherry died in 2022.

I was thinking of all of my snowed-in friends when I chose this poem today. I have lived in places that get a lot of snow (Colorado, Maine) and places that get snow in autumn and it stays around until spring (North Dakota). I understand landscapes where the snow is endless in both time and space.

Snow appears 8 times in this poem. A few of the things I love here: "the fact of space," those mysterious courtyards (which remain mysterious but we all understand places in our own neighborhoods that are unfathomable), and that there is no place without snow. I also like that Cherry has that apple hanging fron snow rather than a branch. Yes, of course it's a branch that the apple is attached to, but it is covered in snow.

Of course, the snow here could be literal and figurative. Especially if you do not like snow, it will be easy for you to think of the snow in this poem as awful things, be they personal, political, or both.

Either way, we are told in this poem that there is a wonderful surprise, no matter how bleak things are in the present. It is not just an apple, but spring, warmth, the snow melt, or the fact that things will get better. The days will get longer. Flowers will bloom. As far as politics, you can fill in your own happy surprises here.

This is my new website! I am still working on it, but it is much more streamlined (it is difficult to tell here on the blog). Look around! I have posted some of my own published poems you cannot find online and there are great quotations to be found!