Sasturgi
Sasturgi: Wind-Sculpted Snow
Smooth or sawtoothed or pleated, folds
Like those of drapes that flow past the floor
And crush upon themselves, or a series
Of small caverns hollowed out on a mountain ridge
Or rock, or on the leeward side of an ice-bound ship,
Innumerable forms depending on force, direction,
Persistence and turns of wind, and on the texture
Of snow, what it works with or against, designs
You cannot market or speculate on, that will,
If conditions permit, repeat themselves for miles:
Perhaps scalloped curves of impeccable regularity
That will, when the sun returns, cast ten thousand
Crescent shadows, small pale moons spaced
Evenly across a glittering plain. Hedges and ridges,
Convolute peninsulas of ice, miniature fjords,
Crevasse and precipitous slope not there
The night before, sublime installations
In silvertones, none made to advance a theory
Of perception, or record the erasures of time,
No memory of form or strategy of line,
Only wind and land carving a cold and polished art.
From: The Valparaiso Poetry Review