More Snow?

It's snowing right now. Everything outside is draped in a soft, white blanket about three inches thick. I've got my bedroom blinds up so that I can watch the large, puffy flakes careen by. There is a row of Rose of Sharon bushes just outside the window... dessicated seed pods collect small cups of snow where where Summer's blooms once sat. I feel inspired to write a poem right now.


Rose of Sharon

The scent washes over me painfully
From the depth of old clothes.
Clutching desperately,
I inhale deeply with clenched lids.

Snowflakes speed by the window
Against a frozen backdrop.
Clusters of white on a nearby bush
Adorn fragile husks of waiting seeds;
A cold chalice fills the blossom's grave.

After days untold
The snow will melt,
Dissolving into cool waters
Whose rivulets seep unnoticed
Into the patient earth.

I grasp the fabric memory
Stubbornly against my chest;
Winter makes her own flowers.


Wow, that was wonderful to write. Cathartic, even. I wanted to capture the feeling of having lost someone and correlate it metaphorically to the experience of Winter, which, though it seems to last forever, always relents into Spring. The subject of the poem does not wish to move on though clearly life is going on around her regardless (symbolized by the rushing snowfall and her separation from it through the window). In fact, the passage of time is so painfully slow and mocking for the subject that it only feeds her desire to hold on to the memory of the lost loved one. If you've ever lost anyone or anything important to you, perhaps you can understand the frame of mind that I am attempting to convey with this poem.

I haven't felt inspired to write a plain old poem in over ten years. That was fun!