Frozen Laughter(For Scarlett) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

We dashed outside
as the sky was falling.

“Crunch...crunch...crunch! ”
chanted the snow

as our footprints
chatted to it

in a bold yellow
booted voice

and slowly a bird
wrote itself across the sky

with such careful calligraphy

& our laughter
froze

right in front of our noses.

*******

OH SNOW!
(For Scarlett)

One day
the snow

popped its head
‘round the door

asked if it could stay
a week or maybe more.

Our smiles
said “Sure! ”

In & out
out & in

we lived
in its whiteness

until my feet
as if they weren’t part of me no more

demanded to come in
dreaming now of a roaring fire.

Flames! Flames!

I stuck my feet
in front of the fire

preferring chilblains to frostbite

but the snow
kept on calling for me.

“Come out...come out...jump about
in me! ”

I put my feet in my wellies

sent them out
to tramp about

in the fields of memory

but I kept
the rest of me

inside
hugging the fire

cuddling it
as it cuddled me.

A survivor
of my first ever remembered snow

that falls forever
over & over

as it remembers
me.