Snow-balling

[Lawrence]

Sorry folks! I've been busy for the past week, but thanksgiving is here and I'm all done! Best wishes to you and your family. Here is a new poem, so fire away!


I put a bit of blizzard
In my mittens, patting and
Packing the sticky snowflakes
Into an arctic orb, which I put down.

Now, as if I were guiding a bowling ball
I roll my crystal globe between the cedars, and
Steer it into a clearing. All the way, it’s size increasing
From something you’d take a swing at, to something I would shoot
Or bounce-pass to you; your arms out-stretched at the half-court line.

I roll it and grow it, until
The boulder refuses to budge,
So I ball another one, but smaller
And soon, a third, while on the horizon
Clouds drift and yawn in the orange dusk.

I stack the three perfectly
The base, the body, the head
Eyes stolen from my sister’s vest
A nose I should have fed my horse with.
And thin limbs I ripped from a tiny tree for him

When I think back to a decade ago
And picture that child piling his snow
Molding a man, impervious to melting
Solemn and still as the February moon-
He wears like a silver crown upon his skull.