Here is a poem by Minnesota’s David Bengtson
about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to
see what’s arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in
picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience
— being fully alive to the clean cold air and the sound of the wind
around the mailbox door.
What Calls Us
In winter, it is what calls us from seclusion, through endless snow to the end of a long driveway where, we hope, it waits —
this letter, this package, this singing of wind around an opened door.
Reprinted from What
Calls Us, a Dacotah Territory Chapbook, 2003,
by permission of the author, whose most recent book is Broken Lines: Prose Poems, from
Juniper Press, St. Paul, Minn. (2003). Poem copyright © 2003 by
David Bengtson. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation,
The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2006.
