The night the snowman came
Moonlight; a biting wind; it’s bitter cold.
Wind from the east – in swift arcs –
laden with ordered geometries.
My window shut fast;
I see the snow is falling.
I see the world fall silent.
And then the drifting snow – alive –
in crisp clean snowscapes –
And all about a star-lit fairy land:
Strange luminosities –
As if enchanted – and so the magic can begin.
That night, beneath the moon, the snowman came.
He walked and ran and danced and sang.
A dream-like company.
I watched him through the night –
– all through those spangle hours.
He’d laugh and smile and play the drum
with slender icicles!
And flash his coal-black eyes –
And sparkle bright against
a pale black sky.
The snowman from that other world.
And in the morning,
in the pale pink dawn
before the rising sun …
He was gone.
(Written after reading Marina Warner’s ‘A brief history of fairy tale‘ and the recent snow in the United Kingdom)
