Nothing is more innocent than snow.
It says: I am not of your world.
We wonder: What child is this,
what wool, what milk?
Then we look back & see our footprints
multiplying behind us.
Maybe this is nothing but a white flag.
But whose turn is it to surrender?
New snow falls & fills the footprints in.
We feel we are being measured for immaculate shoes.
Somehow the color and the flag and the link between the poet and the color/substance reminded me of Whitman…
“A child said, What is the grass?”
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Merry Christmas, Dave Bonta!
Dave and Marly, these are both beautiful. Thank you. Merry Christmas to both of you and your beloveds. xx
Thanks, Luisa. Merry Christmas to you too — and I hope you don’t spend too much time on today’s poem!
Thanks, Marly! Hope you’re having a great holiday. I am of course enormously flattered by the Whitman comparison, but I can see what you’re saying.
“immaculate shoes” – love this. Merry Christmas, Dave!
You too, Catherine! Thanks for reading.
What a Christmas poem. All the more pleasurable because even we got an inch yesterday.
Glad you liked the poem. Yeah, that’s about what we got last night. Unfortunately it warmed up by morning, so it wasn’t quite as winter wonderlandy as it could’ve been, but oh well.
No snow here – thank you Dave for sharing yours, and the beautiful poem. It chimed with my early-Christmas-morning dream:
Herod is long gone
but his work goes on
innocents
are in short supply
bystanders
women and children
all have surrendered
to the winter-naked
trees that brindle
snowfall’s purity
the right of righteous
indignation
penitents
on the pilgrim path
we carry our victims
into the forest
and leave our barefoot
prints across the snow
Nice. Thanks for sharing that.