Snow

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 scars, 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 for now shorter trees to climb, view from above

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

Had a bit of snow in this Albany/Schenectady New York area near the end of the day today. It was hardly a thing, just enough to stick a little to the roads in spots or more in parking lots and on lawns, a light covering, enough to make me break out the brush for a quick once over before I left the station.

On my way home though, on roads that were mostly just wet, there was this one guy in the front of his house, one of the practically elbow to elbow homes, that almost feel like row houses, I pass on some streets in my to and fro’s, clearing the short pathway to his front door with a snow blower, and even his short driveway if he has one, that gift from his father in law a few years back that came with sage advice on how to use and then maintain it along with stories of the “Great Snow of (fill in year long past)” the snow blower that’s been gathering dust, for the most part, in his back yard shed since then.

Now again, when I tell you this snow wasn’t a thing, it wasn’t, actual “things” would scoff at this and belittle it with derisive laughter, I mean this guy’s pathway could just have easily been handled by one of his young kids in a pair of slippers with a broom but “Goddamit!!” I’m sure he thought to himself, “This is my chance! This is fucking snow people!!! I am breaking this M’Fer OUT!!!”

Cheers to you dude.

(ps … if or when we have an actual snow up these here parts he will surely have the last laugh and I will have to try and make friends … I mean, all I got is a broom … and my cat slippers are kinda embarrassing)