First Snow

(Another of my little watercolors ... I know, it doesn't show much snow, but I thought I'd share it anyway)

No, no ... I'm not reporting that we've had snow here in Ohio ... but I guess I am reporting, after a fashion ... reporting on some childhood memories which come rolling back to me on a fairly regular basis.

Besides, "First Snow" also happens to be one of my favorite poems ... along with "Hollyhocks," "Chance of Rain" ... and a few others.

But I digress.

I don't know exactly which hillside Grandma and I were on. I don't know where we were going. Memories become blurred as to certain details.

I do remember the moment, though, when a sudden swirl of huge, fluffy snowflakes descended on us. They were, indeed, like flying feathers.

I hadn't seen anything like them in my whole young life.

The poem:

FIRST SNOW

I watch them
sliding slowly
on my windowpane,
harbingers
come to warn me
of impending winter,
stirring again
that memory
of plucked feathers,
as she called them,
swiftly enveloping
Grandma and me
on a hillside path.

I can still taste
that delicious
melting cold,
still hear her
laughing with me,
that great
explosion of joy.
© 2005

("First Snow" received a first-place award in a Poets' Study Club contest, was later published in The Christian Science Monitor, and became part of Wood Smoke, my third poetry collection, issued by Finishing Line Press)

Today's word: harbingers