A Few Acres Of Snow

Feb 1 2015

The hill
we used to toboggan
could use some snow.
Wasn't it longer, steeper
colder then?

There was nothing hi-tech
about that vintage slab,
close-grained wood
steamed into a curve
and slickly waxed.

It was perilously heavy,

before planned obsolescence

and plastic everything.

Squealing kids
charging up, barrelling down,
look like a paint-box of colour, splashed
on a white canvas field.
Riders in back
whip-sawed off,
lucky front-runners
jammed-in tight.

You don't steer a toboggan.
You set it in motion
and momentum takes over,
hurtling down
on gravity, friction
glee,
where only rocks, exhaustion, trees
can make it stop.

And in its wake
ejected kids, rolling with laughter,
family dogs

racing after.

But the hill
we used to toboggan
is strictly off-limits, these days,
no red-cheeked kids at play
no free-range children.
Unsafe, apparently,
as a big yellow sign proclaims.

The hill
is a study in stillness,
as if waiting
with geological patience
for aeons to change.
White, untrammelled, vacant
in a gentle downward slope;

empty
as the country of winter
except for endless snow.


Way too much Norman Rockwell here. Especially the red-cheeked kids and family dogs! But sometimes, a straight ahead and sentimental poem comes to me that way, and all I can do is take dictation.

There were some stories in the news about municipal toboggan bans: the usual paranoia about legal liability; the usual impulse to bubble-wrap this generation of kids. But I think this poem started with an image. There was a recent snowstorm in New York, and the paper had a aerial shot of kids tobogganing in Brooklyn. It reminded me of a Kurelek painting, with its naive style and splashes of primary colour. (The recently deceased Ted Harrison, who had no fear of colour, also comes to mind.) And that, in turn, brought me back to childhood. I remember the visceral excitement, heading out on a perfect winter day. This is how my dog wakes up every day, as if utterly thrilled to be alive. But we non-canines grow up, and stop feeling such unfiltered joy.

The title echoes Voltaire’s infamous appraisal of Canada:  “ …a country covered with snows and ices eight months of the year, inhabited by barbarians, bears and beavers”;  and, most notoriously, “a few acres of snow”. The bleak and borderless country of winter, dismissed in a few short words with a practised Gallic sneer. Too bad he never tobogganed!

Although the final stanza’s the country of winter is closer to Gilles Vigneault’s much more patriotic this country is winter:  “ Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver”. 

So here is the push and pull of the cold season, repelling and attracting all at once.