Snow Poem

The snow is melting here in Haines, but they're predicting snow showers for the next couple of days. Where I grew up, April was definitely spring, but in a lot of the country, it's still undeniably winter. Anyway, there's still time to get this poem in.




Snow

David Berman

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.



from Actual Air, 1999
Open City Books, New YorkSnow