City Snow - Dec 31 2024

 

City Snow

Dec 31 2024

The palette of winter is grey.

Cars are covered

with salt, sand, and city slush

whatever colour that is.

Grim people

hunker down,

resigned to life in the shadows.

They trudge through grungy snow

in clompy boots that pinch their toes

and still let in the cold

while slip-proof soles aren’t really.

Crumpled uppers

are crusted in a whitish rime

of road salt and weather,

yet still aren’t high enough

to keep them warm and dry.

Folks

in puffy coats

are rendered shapeless, nameless, sexless.

They trudge ahead,

generic lumps

with backs hunched and heads bowed

gazing blankly downward.

As if a slow procession

of the walking dead

had occupied the streets.

So when they hug

there’s no firm finish, nothing to grip,

no body heat

to take or give.

And with mittened hands, or hand in glove

it’s hard to hold

or even touch.

But still, it beats summer bugs

muddy springs

and fall’s sodden leaves,

where soon enough

there will be mould;

allergies

at least until freeze-up

and the ground is covered in snow.

Because on a blue-sky day

in my bright red parka and rainbow hat

the world is remade;

primary colours replace the grey

and downcast eyes are raised.

It’s like walking through a Christmas card,

Norman Rockwell cover art,

a Dylan Thomas winter

in a big pop-up picture book.

I’m a kid

who doesn’t feel the cold,

waltzing outside

in bedroom slippers without a coat.

The little kid

peering out the window

at his first real snow.

Who took great delight

In snow angels and snowmen,

in digging out quinsies

and building snow forts;

late for dinner

while playing at war.

And the bigger kid

who took even greater delight

in tossing snowballs at passing cars.

In rolling over in bed

to hear the powers that be

declare a snow day;

as if the Governor

had pardoned a condemned man

halfway to the gallows,

shackles and chains

clanging with each step.

And now, I’m the one who’s in the drivers’s seat,

peering through a clear patch

in frosted-over glass;

a chiaroscuro world

of softened shades

and grey-on-grey.

At city snow

that starts looking soiled

as soon as it lands.