White Christmas
Dec 24 2014


Cute woollen hats,
pom-pommed, and ear-flapped.

Balaclavas, knit by hand,
frozen stiff
where little noses ran.

Double-thick mittens
and tucked-in socks,
tightly knotted scarves
and itchy long johns.
Felt-lined boots
under goose-down coats
on roly-poly kids
swaddled in clothes.

A rainbow
of brightly coloured snowsuits

on a freshly whitened field,

as dignified

as little penguins

comically wobbling along.

Until a puff-ball child

toppled into the snow
and had to be hoisted out
by the first adult who happened by.

We could tell by the colour
to whom they belonged,

even when one pink princess
looks much like the next.

Back when winters were cold
and it was always white Christmas.
Or so I recalled
as I crossed the wet pavement
in a freezing mist.

The damp goes right to the bone
in winters like this.
When skinny snowmen slump.
When rain has uncovered
patchy clumps

of dead brown grass,

and whatever white stuff's left

is salted with sand.

When all the brightly bundled kids,

have gone missing
and the snowbanks have shrunk,
too small

to trip them up.

I had no plan when I started writing this piece. I was just riffing on winter clothing, and having fun with word play. But when I got past the first few stanzas, and then recalled the image of that drive earlier today, I realized that "all the snow-suited kids have gone missing", and from there the poem wrote itself.

The rather abrupt change in tone just before the closing stanza -- from roly-poly rainbows to rueful reminiscence and downright ugliness -- seems a bit more like cheating than artful misdirection. But I like the way this shift catches the reader off guard. I think that's what makes the poem work (if it works at all, that is).

I think we'll manage to meet the technical definition of a white Christmas this year, if barely. (Certainly here, out in the country where I live.) I guess it's not surprising, in such a weather conscious country as this, that Environment Canada would have its own rigorous criteria: at least 2 cm of snow (any kind of snow, be it sodden, dirty, or crusted) covering the ground at the airport at 7am on Christmas day! But it's been a warm month; and on Dec 24, as I walked to the car on wet pavement in a rainy mist without a coat or gloves, then drove past the few pathetic snowmen that had gamely survived, it sure did not feel like a white Christmas. And I thought how different it is to be growing up today, instead of back in the 60s and 70s. (And, even more gloomily, about climate change and our pusillanimous and ignorant politicians.)

Should I be embarrassed to admit that my favourite part is probably the frozen snot in the 2nd stanza? (With "hoisted" -- in the 5th -- a close second!)