Kit Wright

I wake up back in the upstairs room of the George and Dragon. I’m leaning back on my chair with a pint of John Smith’s in front of me as I puff poetically on a Marlboro. Kit Wright is standing before us looking unfeasibly tall and blonde and he’s reading :


Red Boots On


Way down Geneva,
All down Vine,
Deeper than the snow drift
Love’s eyes shine.

Mary Lou’s walking
In the winter time.

She’s got
Red boots on, she’s got
Red boots on,
Kicking up the winter
Till the winter’s gone.

So

Go by Ontario,
Look down Main,
If you can’t find Mary Lou,
Come back again:

Sweet light burning
In winter’s flame.

She’s got

Snow in her eyes, got
A tingle in her toes
And new red boots on
Wherever she goes

So

All around Lake Street,
Up by St.Paul,
Quicker than the white wind
Love takes all:

Mary Lou’s walking
In the big snow fall.

She’s got

Red boots on, she’s got
Red boots on,
Kicking up the winter
Till the winters gone.


Kit Wright. The Bear Looked Over the Mountain.1977. Salamander.


A Mind of Snow

by Alison Webber


for "Snowflake Bentley" 1865-1931 . < Not one alike



Practise first in summer, when the buttercupt
entassled field is ajump. Tether a gryllus
with a green blade of soft grass
to the black-eyed flower stem
where you found it. Gently,
not too tight. In the morning dew -don't forget
a coat hanger rubbed in spruce pitch
stretched into a kite, ( someone can come carrying it
well behind you, a niece or a nephew )- with your box camera,
record the beaded grasshopper's back
and on his unmoving knees the crystal balls quivering there
foretelling he is set free. This is as close
as you get to herding
the bee. But there is the snow.
Never an end to it, in Jericho, Vermont.

Touch kite to web and bring it entire to the black
background, until you can do this without
dropping a single bead. Then return it, to where it was.
This will be more difficult, but the grasshopper
has taught you how to bilocate and the spider
has done you no harm. Now you are ready
to capture a snowflake. To immortalize
its many windowed branching arms. Innumerable

motes dusted, sharpened as if before a mirror
at the centre, and from its rapturous throat,
the one brief, collapsing note unfolded
crisply, that whispers but once
snow
is all there is.