Anticipation

It is snowing.  Edit.  It is GOING to snow.  The flakes are being a bit elusive at the moment as rain continues to fall.  Surely it's cold enough.  Is it cold enough?  It feels like it.  But what do I know of "cold enough to snow."  I'm a North Carolina girl - and not the western part.  Snow is still a mystery for me.  A beautiful act of trickery.  Surely such beauty is not real.  The excitement.  The silence.  Is there anything better than the silence of a snow covered world at dawn?  Is there?  I fancy there isn't - at least not for a North Carolina girl who becomes five at even the mention of snow.

I've looked out the window no less than 20 times in the past hour.  I am my mother's daughter.  There's an excitement here, a thrill, that I wish you Northerners could understand.  I wish you could see feel the magic.  As a child, talk of snow meant snow days, hot chocolate, and the smell of a wood burning fire place.  It meant snow ball fights, bread bags over our boots, and sledding on street signs.  It meant watching the bird feeder with a Sibley's guide in hand.  Tufted Tit Mouse. Cardinal.  Chickadee.  (Those were easy.) Cedar Wax Wing.  The year the Grosbeaks came.  It was a game to feed the birds and give them names.

One such snow day, it meant a litter of hound puppies.  I remember.  I couldn't have been more than four or five.  There was chili for lunch and puppies that smelled of straw brought inside for the warmth.  I can still smell it.  

So you see, snow is magic.

 "Not Only The Eskimos," by Liesel Mueller from Alive Together (Louisiana State University Press).

Not Only The Eskimos

We have only one noun
but as many different kinds:

the grainy snow of the Puritans
and snow of soft, fat flakes,

guerrilla snow, which comes in the night
and changes the world by morning,

rabbinical snow, a permanent skullcap
on the highest mountains,

snow that blows in like the Lone Ranger,
riding hard from out of the West,

surreal snow in the Dakotas,
when you can't find your house, your street,
though you are not in a dream
or a science-fiction movie,

snow that tastes good to the sun
when it licks black tree limbs,
leaving us only one white stripe,
a replica of a skunk,

unbelievable snows:
the blizzard that strikes on the tenth of April,
the false snow before Indian summer,
the Big Snow on Mozart's birthday,
when Chicago became the Elysian fields
and strangers spoke to each other,

paper snow, cut and taped
to the inside of grade-school windows,

in an old tale, the snow
that covers a nest of strawberries,
small hearts, ripe and sweet,

the special snow that goes with Christmas,
whether it falls or not,

the Russian snow we remember
along with the warmth and smell of our furs,
though we have never traveled
to Russia or worn furs,

Villon's snows of yesteryear,
lost with ladies gone out like matches,
the snow in Joyce's "The Dead,"
the silent, secret snow
in a story by Conrad Aiken,
which is the snow of first love,

the snowfall between the child
and the spacewoman on TV,

snow as idea of whiteness,
as in snowdrop, snow goose, snowball bush,

the snow that puts stars in your hair,
and your hair, which has turned to snow,

the snow Elinor Wylie walked in
in velvet shoes,

the snow before her footprints
and the snow after,

the snow in the back of our heads,
whiter than white, which has to do
with childhood again each year.