ballade des neiges

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.