White Christmas

snowy trail

Nothing is more innocent than snow.
It says: I am not of your world.

We wonder: What child is this,
what wool, what milk?

Then we look back & see our footprints
multiplying behind us.

Maybe this is nothing but a white flag.
But whose turn is it to surrender?

New snow falls & fills the footprints in.
We feel we are being measured for immaculate shoes.

12 Replies to “White Christmas”

  1. Somehow the color and the flag and the link between the poet and the color/substance reminded me of Whitman…

    “A child said, What is the grass?”

    A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
    hands;
    How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
    is any more than he.

    I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
    green stuff woven.

    Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
    A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
    Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
    may see and remark, and say Whose?

    Merry Christmas, Dave Bonta!

    1. Glad you liked the poem. Yeah, that’s about what we got last night. Unfortunately it warmed up by morning, so it wasn’t quite as winter wonderlandy as it could’ve been, but oh well.

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  3. No snow here – thank you Dave for sharing yours, and the beautiful poem. It chimed with my early-Christmas-morning dream:

    Herod is long gone
    but his work goes on

    innocents
    are in short supply

    bystanders
    women and children

    all have surrendered
    to the winter-naked

    trees that brindle
    snowfall’s purity

    the right of righteous
    indignation

    penitents
    on the pilgrim path

    we carry our victims
    into the forest

    and leave our barefoot
    prints across the snow

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