One of the walking trails near my sister’s house in Vermont has a series of sign posts with a changing collection of local poetry. I liked that the posts, like the one pictured to the left, are off the path a bit, so you have to look for them. And I especially enjoyed the poem below, contrasting the east and west coasts.
New England Winter
Paul Mariani
To hell with John Greenleaf Whittier
and his chirpy snowfall odes. Snow.
We’ve had our share: 18 storms thus far,
ice layered like so much sandstone shale.
A regular archaeologist’s dig.
All the television graphics show
this at least: a winter made in hell.
Each day now proud old records fall,
to be replaced by miserable new ones.
What fun it is to sit here counting
off minus 30 mornings, these glittering
kitchen pipes festooned with ice.
On the upside, take the Angelinos after
last month’s quake, fear mounting
with the mounting Richter Sale,
the decibels revised upward. Twice.
“Maybe, but I’ll still take the quake’s
twenty seconds to your hundred-day
glacial siege. Anytime.” Thus my
California sister, who can be tough.
What hours, days, I have spent
reading the West Coast fault lines from L.A.
on up, all the way to the Aleutian chain.
“At least we’re built on firmer stuff.”
I feel myself edging to a crushing
rejoinder, this once vindicated. But by then
she’s off the phone, no doubt
outdoors already, tanning on that delicious
cedar-toasted deck of hers which gazes
so serenely out over the Pacific Ocean.
While here am I, iced-over & snowed under,
blinking out this frozen glass. At this.