Editor’s note: On this first really nice spring day, it seems fitting to pause and reflect on our long collective winter. MG contributor Geri Silk shares her thoughts in verse:
I am even grateful for the black snow
By Geraldine Silk
The winter of 2014, the great white snow united us
Many days inside looking out
Like so many neighbors
Seeing big fat fluffy flakes drift by our window sills
In-home prisoners of Mother Nature’s rapturous folly
First, the grace of the glistening downy feathers pile up and up and up
Making walking, driving, seeing impossible
Then, as neighbors creep out to gather supplies—milk, eggs, butter, videos, we meet in supermarket aisles to compare notes—
How high, how wide, how dangerous, how curious
Long hazardous icicles hang over our heads like Damocles sword poised for danger
But at night, asleep in our beds, cozy under a snow while blanket of repose, we dream of sleigh rides;
the charming miniaturization of a snow globe, white clouds of freedom and world peace.
We are grateful for the delicate snowflakes dancing and swirling in the enchanted universe
Now, all that remains are small choppy islands of unmeltable ice in the most inconvenient places
The black snow remains the prisoner of memory, held together by invisible subatomic particles of ice
Oh, I am grateful for the snow that united us all under the cozy feathery down comforter
I am grateful we had this time together to be apart from our everyday race
When I think of that common bond, I am even grateful for the black snow
Geri Silk is a Dance Movement Therapist, poet, and amateur flute player in the Morristown area.
