southern drivers in snow
we moved from chicago
in september
…………………the first
snow flake fell in the month
of january
………………we
saw a driver swerve to
miss it and go straight in
the ditch
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 12, 2014
I only know three
(Expurgated Version)I only know three of the Inuit words
for snow, and they are, in translation, “the-snow-
that-falls-light-and-fluffy-and-can-be-ignored;”
“the-snow-wet-enough-to-make-two-obscene-snow-
folks-frolicking-out-in-the-yard;” and then last,
“the-white-stuff-that-falls-so-darn-wet-thick-and-fast-
that-shoveling-is-required-just-to-go-out-
for-beer.” (And that last word is said as a SHOUT!)
–
Isocrates, Greek teacher and rhetorician
And the first deep cold
This year came
Before the lawn chairs
Were inside
The old brown shed.
The fall leaves
Bright red and yellow
Froze in mats
Unraked and unbagged
Under the thick snow.
The bird bath
Cracked and the hoses
Split from ice
Expanding cruelly
Relentlessly.
Will my clear
Procrastination
Be punished
All winter long or
Will a warm week
Bring forgiveness?
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, November 13, 2013
In the tropics
the people know
life is languid:
there is no snow.
…
Moving, working,
and thinking: slow.
What’s the hurry?
It will not snow.
…
Ice is only
inside the drinks;
hockey players
must go to rinks.
…
Skating, sledding,
and snowman fun–
all is elsewhere.
Icicles: none.
…
Brown ground: dirty,
no change in sight;
nothing ever
becomes all white.
…
Bugs and kudzu
will swarm and grow:
never winter,
no saving snow…
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 1, 2013
Note from Views from the Edge:
Steve with kite in snow
Prayers on New Year’s Day for 2013 “saving snow” in languid-no-change-in- sight D.C. and the hinterlands.
1% of water
on the earth we can drink
(all the rest is salty.)
Since our bodies, we think,
are more than half water,
then thinking is faulty
that will waste and pollute.
…
U.S. Senator Paul Simon, b.1928, d.2003
Senator Simon said
the crops need to be fed
that life-giving liquid.
Can we be resolute,
look into the future,
change wasteful behavior?
…
Will the glaciers all melt
and the deserts expand?
Will there always be drought?
Will our rivers run dry?
Cumulus clouds
Will there never be snow?
And will anything grow
with no clouds in the sky?
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL Sept. 26, 2012
Gordon C. Stewart published by MPR December 30, 2010
About this time of year, people in the Upper Midwest are wishing we were in Florida, Arizona, California or Mexico. The snow and cold get old.
But there’s a beauty to the snow and cold. Last week my friend Steve, who lives in Florida, finally came to Minnesota. Steve and I went to junior high school together in Pennsylvania. He’s lived mostly in the sunny climates of California and Florida. I’ve become a Minnesotan.
I’ve been trying to get him here for years; he always laughed when I told him how beautiful it is. “It’s cold!” he’d say.
Last week when, to my eyes, the snow had gotten dirty and the cold was bone-chilling, Steve finally came to Minnesota for his nephew’s wedding. When I picked him up at his hotel, the first words out of his mouth were, “It’s beautiful! This is really beautiful!”
We drove to the Dunn Brothers in downtown Chaska for a cup of coffee. “Wow, this is really neat,” he said. “We don’t have anything like this in Florida. This is a real town.” After an hour of catching up over coffee, he asked if we could walk down to the river. We walked the few blocks to the river and along the path that runs along the top of the levy in front of the townhomes.
It’s a beautiful scene of the Minnesota River. I was freezing up there, but Steve shot pictures, as excited as I would be snapping pictures of sea turtles spawning on a warm beach in Florida.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Steve was beholding it. I was not — until I got home and saw the picture Steve had posted on Facebook, and the comment posted by someone who hadn’t been chilled to the bone on the riverbank. “That’s beautiful!” she wrote. “It’s so perfect it doesn’t even look real.”
And I realized: It is beautiful, and it is real. Just like the real downtown and the old corner coffee shop where strangers get to know each other by name — a real place to warm ourselves while we complain about the winter weather over a cup of coffee.
About the middle of January I’ll forget how beautiful it is here in Minnesota. I might spend a few days at Steve’s condo in Florida just to get warm, and to realize again what we have here that Steve doesn’t have there.
In the meantime, when the snow and cold get old, I’ll look at the Currier and Ives picture Steve put up on Facebook to remind myself of the beauty I take for granted in the Land of 10,000 (frozen) Lakes.
Views from the Edge 