Two Small Winter Poems

 

Waking In a Snow Globe

The wild wind tipped the world

upside down while I was sleeping.

Now, snow catches in tree-caught gusts of air

that blow small birds off course

and set the wind chimes swinging.

High above the spinning white,

the sun is prying the clouds apart,

loosing snowy feathers from the downy puffs,

until the air itself is made of silver and gold.

Winter Day

Snow is falling all around,

it swirls and eddies to the ground,

it makes a kind of whispery sound,

as is comes tumbling down.

Mystery

With all the Bernie mitten memes circulating the internet, I found myself thinking about mittens and remembered this poem from my years in the classroom teaching poetry. It was winter term and one second grader said, "It's cold out. Make up a poem about mittens." So I did.

Mystery

I found a mitten in the snow,

just one, just thumb and hand,

and stripes of red and green and white

around the mitten band.

I don't know how it came to be

alone and in the snow,

or where the other one might be

and how was I to know?

perhaps it from a pocket fell,

perhaps a child lost it,

perhaps it kept a snowman's hand

from getting cold and frosted.

I hung it from a bushy branch

that grew there on the lawn,

and next day when I went to look

the mitten? It was gone.

 

Forever Winter