Posted in Uncategorized, tagged praise, snow, snowmen on November 30, 2020| 2 Comments »
Their hats are cockamamie.
One has lost its carrot nose.
Stone buttons and eyes
have long since succumbed
to gravity. But there is
something yet dignified
about the snow people in the yard,
their knobby stick arms raised
as if, in their declining state,
there’s still so much to praise.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, play, snowmen on November 27, 2020| 4 Comments »
We rolled them out of backyard snow.
How quickly snow balls the size of a heart
become snow boulders the size of a man.
We gave them features
to make them more like us.
Dark brown stems and leaves of dried mint?
Those became hair. Carrots for noses,
of course. Small gray rocks for eyes.
Plus knobby sticks. Rust-colored leaves.
Thin icicles from the eaves.
The wail of a siren going by—
that went into them, too.
Plus a prayer for those in pain.
And a slip of blue Colorado sky.
We walked among them,
these rare guests in a time of quarantine,
and perhaps we felt our loneliness lift.
What is a snow man but a temporary cairn,
a dolled up trail marker that leads us
back to ourselves, back to our own backyard.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84, lose the self, snowmen, transformation on December 27, 2011| 1 Comment »
the snowmen
make it look
easy
to lose the self
they do not
ask how
nor does
the sun
ask permission
to help