Snow
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth.
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn't know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
—David Berman
1. Why does the author of the poem use the word troop to describe the angels in the snow?
2. What does I didn't know where I was going with this. say about the author’s relationship with his brother?
3. Why does the author place the lines ice looked like a photograph of water. and outdoors seem like a room where they are in the poem? What effect do these lines offer to the tone of the poem?
4. What does the line Today I traded hellos with my neighbo say about the author of the poem?
5. Why does the author place the line room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling here? What effect does this line offer to the tone of the poem?
6. Why does the author of the poem include the three questions from his brother?
Neglect
Is the scent of apple boughs smoking
in the woodstove what I will remember
of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed
that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit?
Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap's
passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.
I should have lopped the dead limbs early
and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye,
patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,
compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted
by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture,
too callow to believe that death's inevitable
for any living being unloved, untended.
What remains is this armload of applewood
now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor
ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet
harvest headed, by dawn, to embers.
Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts
and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen,
spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone.
Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter
regret, I've been given to remember.
Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder
than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.
—R. T. Smith
● Find synonyms for the words in yellow to help gain a better understanding for the poem before
answering the following questions.
● What does the author of the poem suggest he/she has done wrong In coaxing the apple tree to thrive?
● What does the line sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart convey about the image of the tree? Why does the author use the word blacken? What does this metaphor suggest to the reader of the poem?
● What is the line I was too enchanted by pear saplings suggest about the author/speaker of the poem?
● Why does the author place the images of any living being unloved, untended and a scarlet harvest headed, by dawn, to embers where they are in the poem?
● What is the overall tone of this poem?
● What is the theme of this poem?
● How do the tone and theme of this poem symbolize Doodle (William Armstrong) and his brother?