First Snow
Nov 6 2014


The first snow
comes unexpectedly.
It feels like hard rain,
slanting down in sloppy splats

hypodermically cold.

In wet flakes
that cling to my lids

for the briefest instant,
veiling the world
in a curtain of bluish light.
Then melt quickly,
sending cold rivulets
down my open neck.

The moment it touches
warm green earth
the early snow vanishes,
leaving glistening grass, stiff with frost
in the thin light

of early dawn.

Then the first time
a soft blanket covers it all,

the democracy of snow
turning everything white.
When it feels the world has been put to rest;
nothing growing
and the soil slowly
replenishing itself.

Until fast

in February’s fortress,
when snow seems permanent
winter eternal.
In the clear arctic air, when it's too cold to melt,
and sits
on my hat, my shoulders
my frozen lids.

When I feel enclosed;
comforted
to see the world
through a refracted blur 
of crystal light.


A purely descriptive poem, which I always resist writing, but end up doing anyway. I like to think that once I get something like this out of my system, I'll feel free to write something more affecting. But maybe this is what I do, and should just accept.

The poem started with that first fall snow, when it's half rain/half snow, and you can feel it as much as see it.

And then the early dusting, that instantly disappears like a magician's trick. A nice dry run of impending winter, when you know there will be nothing to drive in or shovel, and the living is still easy. ("...early dusting ...a nice dry run ...nothing to drive in, or shovel ..."; hmmm, maybe that should have been the poem!)

And the comforting feeling I get when the snow is here to stay: as if the world were at rest, time on hold.

And at either end, when I just let the snow fall on me: accumulating on my lids, and blurring the world away.

In this poem, I'm revisiting what I think was the first poem I ever write, in late 2001. It was also called First Snow (I think). I remember looking out the kitchen window at dusk, and feeling suddenly inspired. It will be interesting to see how my writing has changed, and whether I've progressed -- or not. That is, if I have the nerve to search it out and  put it up! I’ve also used “democracy of snow” before, in a poem I still think is a good one: one of my favourites snow poems (if I remember it correctly), with a very clever martial theme deftly running through it.