The Snow Was 17 Feet (poem)

by Stephen J Frankenberry

For a prompt of “Snow” from Kim at dVerse Poets and a now new poem version of a little remembrance I wrote a number of years ago of when I was a kid, after a big snow, and got my first scar, and a piece that I just recently re-posted.

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The Snow Was 17 Feet

The snow was tall

taller still in my small

17 feet

maybe

it had to be

at least

but I would climb it

cross it

on top to its peak

reach out for now shorter trees to climb and view from above it

with determined scarved stare

and new purpose swim goggles

in imagined funny tennis racket shoes (regular boots)

just like in TV shows of winter

with penguins

and white bears

and whiter blank horizons

and shout to other snow still falling that I was their King

each and every flake

joining brothers and sisters that had played pile on

in the night

at my door

with a glass view of my waiting kingdom

and I pushed and fussed and shoved and punched

“Let me through snow … I am King!”

until my view shattered and polka dotted

the front step’s landscape

and little glinting reflections

of broken, jagged sky laughed

and small kings found that they bleed

and scar

but

in an always reminder of snow 17 feet

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2026 is here and a post revisit – The Snow Was 17 Feet

13 thoughts on “The Snow Was 17 Feet (poem)”

  2. I’m enjoying all the memories of snow, Stephen, just not my own! I love the thought that ‘snow was tall / taller still in my small’. I remember a winter in Ireland when the snow reached our roof. I was terrified. Your ‘determined scarved stare and new purpose swim goggles’ made me smile. I hope the fall wasn’t too serious.

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