snow poem

It has not actually snowed in PERTH since 27 December (not more than an inch or so, anyway). It is just incredible how the snow misses us. However, there is still about 8 inches of snow out there because the temp has not got much above -5 C / 23 F for three weeks (and is set to go down to -11 C / 12 F again tonight).

I wrote this poem in 1996, but it's really about the winter of 1994. It comes to mind now as all our neighbors' pipes freeze and we haven't seen the ground since before Christmas. I went sledding with Sara and a friend of hers this morning and realized afterward that for the first time in ten years we had to quit because we were exhausted--but not wet. It is too cold for anything to melt.

I LOVE WEATHER!

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Ballade des Neiges



This a spectacular foe:
Winter profounder than memory,
snow stalling imagination.
Memory lied. In a temperate climate
I listened to wind through ill-fitting windows
in a thin room shared with my sister
and whistled a call for cold Christmas
in a frenzy of midwinter longing,
lost school nights conjuring snow
which never appeared.
Where was the waste we remembered,
the twelve days and twelve nights of blizzard,
the birches borne low by December,
the ice-banded end of the year?
Memory lied. It was warm
in our winter of icicled imagination.
This is the ice-spell complete:
The road ending in a blind canyon,
the copper pipes frozen,
the dreaded next slaughtering storm.
Memory hums the old schoolgirl question:
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
The groan of dammed river and eaves,
the splinters that fall in the forest,
pilled sleet through dry oak
and the plow's distant thunder repeat:
We are here,
we are here.