Poems: February 4, 2015
I asked Jeanine Gervais, who lives in the northern Boston area, which has also been slammed with snow, to write a poem about winter for the blog.
Note: a “snow farms,” I just learned are the places (like empty parking lots) where cities/towns are putting snow to get it off the streets.
Our Winter of 2015
By Jeanine H. Gervais…inspired by my friend, Louisa P. Enright
It has been snowing for years now
or so it seems
The sky a milky white
warns us
more to come.
Blankets of snow will silence everything.
There is no escape:
TV weathermen with anxious voices reminding us
of record snow fall…school closings…stay off roads
sand and plow trucks have been deployed.
Why do they broadcast TV newsmen
on top of snow mounds,
then too breathless to give reports,
like we need to see snow mounds
we have the real thing.
We have our own snow farms, too.
It takes 15 minutes to put on four layers
the windchill factor minus 17 degrees
to find the mailbox glued shut
but it doesn’t matter because mailmen who deliver in rain, sleet, and snow,
don’t. I miss my mail.
The Boston Globe newspaper tube
a frozen cannoli,
glare ice hides
under baby-powder snow.
I hear the roofs heave,
salt is eating my car.
Friends from Florida and Arizona
send emails
with cute remarks
but that’s okay,
we can take it.
We had to jump off merry-go-rounds,
such a gift.
February 2, 2015