Wow. I guess I have seen occasional occurrences of "snow waves" of that form in Finland a few times in my life. Perhaps on river ice... They might be much more familiar to someone who grew up in the middle of the great Ostrobothnian fields. My childhood home was surrounded by too many trees.
I am not exactly a seafarer either, but the Finnish literary language as I know it likes metaphors related to water, so
tyrsky was the first thing that came to mind.
Sadly enough, the pictures do not help me to decide between
sillä versus
siellä. Perhaps I should pick
siellä (adverb), because
sillä (noun, adessive case), in this context, is somehow pulling me towards feeling that the poor plants have no roots.
pälvi is a funny word: wherever most of the ground is covered in snow towards the end of the winter, it refers to the small snow-free patches (also:
sulapälvi), but once the spring has taken over, it refers to the remaining patches of snow (also:
lumipälvi).
rakeiset lumilaikut may be closer to your original idea, but using
pälvi makes the expression shorter and therefore more flexible when it comes to rhythm.
***
What you say about reversing word orders makes me ponder. Traditional Finnish poetry bends word orders very heavily, but that is usually done in order to achieve a rigorous rhythm-and-rhyme formula. I have read somewhere that in the Russian-language culture, the older and stricter rules of poetry were loosened by respected poets at some point and the results were deemed fruitful (and this had a huge impact on smaller Soviet literary cultures of that time, too). Meanwhile in Finland (mainly during the 1950s and the 1960s, I think), there was a bitter confrontation between the old school and the new school. Most younger poets completely abandoned rhyme and pretty much gave up old rhythm rules as well. This is why I might not have enough tradition to lean on: in my world, it has been so much more of an "either-or".
I do not have much theoretical knowledge on what kinds of word order bending are "allowed" and what kinds are not. I do have a pretty clear intuition when it comes to the older style; but when I write bits of modern-style poetry in Finnish myself, I try to remain on the safe side and avoid venturing too far from prose syntax. What I am trying to say, I may have "corrected" your word orders too much, but we would need a specialist (or at least several hours of coordinated work) to reach your aesthetic ideal in Finnish.
Nevertheless, that old-school intuition of mine is screaming that you should try "eivät enää iloa vie" if that happens to sound better to you...
Hrm. I hope you do not mind if I have another go. I have been rather sick for a couple of days, and this makes for some good brain exercise now that I am getting better.
***
Minun pöydälläni on lasissa
kolme hopeapensaan varpua.
Helmikuu on aivan alussa
ja liukuvat ohitseni
päivät, tuulet, lumisateet.
Voisinko sanoa varmasti,
että olen jo talveen työlääntynyt,
että kaipaan täältä niin kevääseen,
suoraan pakkasen sydämestä?
Että latvojen selkeä etsaus,
että pöyheät valkeat lakit,
pihlajan marjoilla makaavat,
eivät iloa enää vie?
Niin sanon ”pian kevät tulee”
sekä ”pian sireenit kukkivat”,
kuin ”pian” merkitsisi ”huomenna”.
Niin katselen hiljaista aroa,
hangen jähmettyneitä tyrskyjä,
kuin kangasvuokkojen idut
jo yltyleensä siellä nousisivat
rakeisten pälvien lomasta.
Vaan huoneessani, sen lämmössä,
kolmen hopeapensaanvarpuni
silmut lienevät vähän paisuneet.
