Searching for Snow
Press your nose against the pane,
wish for it. Scan the sky. Listen
for the silence of every living thing
braced against the cold.
You want snowmen, snowball contests,
to be snowed in, kept off school.
Some hope, except in dreams
of dragging caked mittens from tingling fingers,
sipping hot chocolate, regressing to ‘Watch with Mother’.
Snow remakes the world for however long it lasts
until the tension goes out of it. As childish
as innocence before grown-up boots stamp it out.
This poem first appeared in Voices for Kosovo, Stride , for Chrilsren’s Aid Direct, 1999, and subsequently in my third collection The Way We Came, bluechrome 2007.
Angela Topping 