Oh Snow! (For Scarlett) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

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.