SNOW TIME

New England poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) wrote at the start of The First Snowfall.

"The snow had begun in the gloaming

And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway 

With a silence deep and white."

What a beautiful work of poetry.  I like it's rhythm, and the pictures that it triggers in my mind.

The next part of the poem continues to paint a picture in my receptive brain:

"Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl,

And the poorest twig on the elm tree

Was ridged inch deep with pearl."

When I was in grammar school, I tried to memorize this poem, but couldn't get past the first part. Years later, when snow is predicted, this poem excerpt pops up in my head, as it did yesterday when Westminster, Maryland, where I now live, received a couple of inches of "ermine".  

Everything looked good until the snow-flakes melted into rain drops. As a former president said almost constantly, "It was sad."

During this underwhelming snowstorm. a sudden gust of 55 mph blew my whale sculpture off of it's hooks and laid it across one of the porch chairs relatively unharmed. It had been safely hanging on my side porch for twelve years without any problem. (Was this wind gust a manifestation of global warming?)

During my childhood in New Bedford, Massachusetts, I slept in a room without heat. I kept the window cracked open, Summer and Winter. Usually in the Winter months I had to scrape the ice off of that window.

During my before-school job delivering milk for a dairy, I had to rise at four a.m. each morning regardless of the weather.  I still remember how cold it was. The van had no heater (who wants warm milk?) and I couldn't get the delivery van's door open, even when my driver-boss lit his stinky cigars to cover the smell of his stinky farts.

Whenever I opened a glassed-in porch to deposit half-frozen milk, I could feel the warmth emanating from some heating source, and I would curse my lot and vow to find some way when I grew up to keep myself warm all year long.  Perhaps I could move to sunny Florida!

My wife and I and our little bird, Schatzie, moved to Maryland in 1960.  Our knowledgeable friends told us that since Maryland was situated below The Mason-Dixon Line, we would be moving to a warm location. Boy were they wrong!

Snow occurs quite a bit less than in New Bedford and the low temperatures rarely dip as low.  But it still is a bit chilly and does have snow drops as it had yesterday. However, since Elaine and I are in warm inside hibernation, we shouldn't care about Winter weather anymore.

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