Snow Angel

Feb 7 2015

To make a snow angel
you lie on your back
in virgin snow
and fan your out-stretched arms.

I haven't seen one in years.
Was the snow deeper

when we were small?

Are kids growing up too fast,
too distracted

blasé?

And who doesn't scoff
at superstition, in this secular age?

At that chubby cherub

precious as a baby-doll,

six-winged seraph

eye-to-eye with God?

Anyway, engineers calculate
that for human flight
our wingspan would be impractical.
That snow angels

would descend from heaven

white as captive doves,
feathering down
all around us
like wounded birds.

The simple pleasures
of childhood
making the best of snow.
Before God's messengers
were grounded.
Before the angel of death
was stuck somewhere
in an unploughed schoolyard,
desperately flexing
his useless wings.
And just when the devil
who detests the cold
has made himself scarce.

I miss seeing
those hopeful impressions
in freshly fallen snow,
the hollowed-out shape
of a very small child.
A tiny mitten
hand-knit, bright red
left
in the empty space.



Last night I watched a movie called Snow Angels. Or, more accurately, re-watched: I'd first seen it several years ago, but it was so good (and my memory so alarmingly vague!), I indulged myself.

A child dies. (As well as a grieving mother, who wasn't happy in the first place; and must have loathed herself for her impatient outbursts, her one fatal lapse in attention. And a young father, whose earnest well-meaning and essential neediness were tragically matched by his inadequacy and inner demons.)

When I sat down to think of something to write, the poignant innocence of that title came to me. I thought how anachronistic snow angels are. How I turned up my nose, as a child, thinking how girly they were. And how politically incorrect they now would seem, if not downright silly. But I think that dead child was in my subconscious. Especially the image of the snow angel as an empty negative, with its implication of absence. And, reinforcing this, its transience: tramped over, snowed-in, or lost to melt.

Which may explain why a poem that starts off in nostalgia and detached amusement takes the turn it does. Although that's only if you read it with this in mind. Because the poem can easily be read just the opposite: death on vacation, the devil at bay; and the beautiful snow angel, a pure expression of a child's innocent fun. So the orphaned mitten is either a poignant symbol of loss, or a smiling reminder of carefree childhood.

The poem turns on the idea that the traditional depiction of angels contradicts the physics of flight. Of course, only a scientist would quibble! What a perfect illustration of how diametrically opposed are the two world views: religion, with its faith and allegory; vs. science, with its skepticism and measurement. But it's true. I recall hearing that engineers had done exactly this: calculate if the surface area of an angel's wings, as a Renaissance painting would have them, could sustain flight. Apparently not: the wings needed would be far too big and heavy for any human-sized creature to hold up, let alone put into motion. ...So who knows, maybe snow angels really are the grounded remains of their celestial creators!