Go With The Snow

Snow

Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth

I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill

and did not know where I was going except to the top of it.

In those days we went out like that.

Even children went out like that.

Someone was crying hard at home again,

raging blizzard of sobs.

I dragged the sled by its rope,

which we normally did not do

when snow was coming down so hard,

pulling my brother whom I called by our secret name

as if we could be other people under the skin.

The snow bit into my face, prickling the rim

of the head where the hair starts coming out.

And it was a big one. It would come down and down

for days. People would dig their cars out like potatoes.

How are you doing back there? I shouted,

and he said Fine, I’m doing fine,

in the sunniest voice he could muster

and I think I should love him more today

for having used it.

At the top we turned and he slid down,

steering himself with the rope gripped in

his mittened hands. I stumbled behind

sinking deeply, shouting Ho! Look at him go!

as if we were having a good time.

Alone on the hill. That was the deepest

I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it

when I stare at paper or into silences

between human beings. The drifting

accumulation. A father goes months

without speaking to his son.

How there can be a place

so cold any movement saves you.

Ho! You bang your hands together,

stomp your feet.  The father could die!

The son! Before the weather changes.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from ‘Fuel’

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis MacNeice