Snow

Greta Bolger

Having been a Michigan girl
since birth at Saginaw General,
I have seen my share
of winters. Once, long ago,
we had SO MUCH SNOW.

As a toddler, my parents parroted
me parroting their protests:
“Look at all that damn snow!” Knee deep,
hip deep, shovel off the roof deep,
skating and sledding open for months.

In elementary, I hung out with boys,
played in deep snow with Jim Meyer,
came inside, soaked, to “crush nuts,”
left over holiday nuts, nutcracker gripped
in small hands, melt and shells falling to the floor.

In our early days, you took me to Shiawassee Flats
sub-zero, stretches of ice, menthol
Benson and Hedges 100s an excuse
for not talking, Firebird heat, cracked windows.
You said you hated my orange tweed pants.

Snowstorm of 78. You were in Ann Arbor,
I was in East Lansing, 10 people into a purple VW
and down to Beggars, Lizards, what traction!
Later, years of cross-country skiing with our kids,
tobogganing, the warming house, hot chocolate.

The winter I went to Houghton in the UP on business.
we watched it snow all day outside the meeting room,
plowed snow on every street corner nine feet high.
This winter, bare pavement the last four weeks,
birthday gifts for my grandson irrelevant:
snow shovel, snow tube, snowball gun.

Will they miss snow when they’re flying around
in personal spacecraft over steaming cities,
white crystals merely a myth, snow no more
than a metaphor for longed for cold, a folk
tale of a world that failed to end in ice?