When Snow Falls

Winter one-third over,
and still, we wait.
A featureless sky holds nothing,
or a scattering of clouds soon to be
nothing. Should snow fall,
it would be such a miracle
that angels would come down
to lie on their backs
and gaze back into the heavens
and spread their wings to delight
in the sensation of a novelty
that was once a normal occurrence
here, in mid-Missouri. Now,
I am told, the occasional dusting of
flakes that is gone by next day,
rapid fluctuations of temperature
having become the norm, is nothing
like the heavier snowfalls that stayed
on the ground all season, in days gone by.

My own memories are from
the greater part of my life spent within
New York, not far from the shore of
Lake Erie, where snow would fall for
hours, even days. And though times
have changed, as have weather patterns
around the world, winters there still see
school snow days with photos of
grandchildren beside a snowman
and videos of them making snow angels.
Dark skies may bring those snowfalls, but
the smiles and red cheeks on the faces of
those children in the crisp, cool air
are bright enough to rival the sun
as it finally breaks through the clouds.
Missouri may hold an advantage in
convenience during the winter, but I miss
the beauty of winter I knew in New York.

 This poem is my response to Poetics: New Year Snow, the prompt from Kim at dVerse ~ Poets Pub that asks us to “write about snow as you see, feel, or imagine it.”