Like Ribbons Made Of Snow

 

January does not seem like the right time of year for a poem about a waterfall, but January 1991 was when this poem appeared in Poetry magazine.

The photo is of Smith Falls located in Smith Falls State Park twelve miles northeast of Valentine, Nebraska on the south side of the Niobrara River.

I took this picture in July, 2006.

The poem is by one of my favorite poets.

The Waterfall By Mary Oliver

For all they said,
I could not see the waterfall
until I came and saw the water falling,
its lace legs and its womanly arms sheeting down,

while something howled like thunder,
over the rocks,
all day and all night –
unspooling

like ribbons made of snow,
or god’s white hair.
At any distance
it fell without a break or seam, and slowly, a simple

preponderance –
a fall of flowers – and truly it seemed
surprised by the unexpected kindness of the air and
light-hearted to be

flying at last.
Gravity is a fact everybody
knows about.
It is always underfoot,

like a summons,
gravel-backed and mossy,
in every beetled basin –
and imagination –

that striver,
that third eye –
can do a lot but
hardly everything. The white, scrolled

wings of the tumbling water
I never could have
imagined. And maybe there will be,
after all,

some slack and perfectly balanced
blind and rough peace, finally,
in the deep and green and utterly motionless pools after all that falling?