This poem was first posted here on February 14, 2024, just under two years ago.

It fits today, the Monday after the largest snowstorm here in Lancaster in the past several years.

We ended up getting about ten inches of snow though we saw predictions of up to twenty-six inches.

For me, that was disappointing. I love snow. I love watching it fall. I love going outside in boots. I love snow clearing. I love playing with the dogs in the snow.

Looking now at this poem, two more years of writing poetry under my belt, I appreciate what I did here.

It feels a bit strange to be critical of my own poem, especially here in the open, but I don’t love this one.

I like the metaphor. It is complicated but not impossible. The poet describes a comfortable scene of being asleep at night while snow falls “from flowers hidden behind/clouds.”

The twist I made then, that night decided once day began to slip away from the “wedding,” takes a dark turn, points out that a poet might draw an idyllic scene but that doesn’t mean the poet gets to define a relationship.

That line “wary of metaphor” works well here. Night left because it is so often used in metaphors of all kinds, to represent things it might resent being associated with.

I like the poem, though, because it is short and it doesn’t ask too much of itself. The poem makes a point then steps aside.

I like the photo here. It feels cold but does not explicitly show snow. I don’t really want my photos to connect directly to the poems they accompany. That pushes them into a spot where they might have to carry weight for the poem, or where the poem has to carry weight for them.

I used to do this a lot, but I’ll share the image that the WordPress AI suggests I share for this post, just to see, just because I’m curious.

That is on the nose. And isn’t black and white as I’d asked for nicely.

And I don’t like how those dogs are looking at me.

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Time to go play with my dogs in the snow.