Beautiful Oblivion

The poem that resonated the most with my thoughts was, “Car Covered With Snow,” by Marianne Borvch. I could clearly get an image of a mother and son sitting in a parked car that has been in the snow for hours and has accumulated a layer of snow on the windshield. The line, “And the stillness is such that I lose how the day works,” is so profound because for anyone who has just sat and tried to listen to the snow has realized that there is a such a “quiet stillness” that is created that it is almost serene. I know that when I sit in the snow, I can hear the “quiet” and sometimes like to just watch the snowflakes fall from the sky and envelop the world. Everything seems more delicate and fragile when the snow covers it all. When you read the speaker discuss her son’s patience with his mother’s desire to sit in her car and just listen to the snow you can tell it wears thin. You get a cute depiction of a small child sighing at his mother’s insistence of a moment of peace. The second best line in the poem is, “We’re deep in the brain then, seeing as the blind see, all listening.” She describes sitting in the car under the snow as a deep cavity she has placed herself in, and how it is similar to being inside one’s brain. She also compares it to being blind, since the snow is preventing her from seeing anything, and she must rely on her hearing. And then she hears the heavy sound of snow….as unlikely as that is, because we all imagine snow as light and fluffy. But it’s the silence of the snow that is deafening and heavy.

I think that Borvch does an excellent job in capturing the “loudness” and peacefulness that falling snow brings to people.

*Donya Botkan*