Eighteen Days on the Ground by Linda Banks
I could wait until it snows here in Austin, but what’s the fun in that? This is another poem from the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. I couldn’t find a website for Linda Banks, but she is in the Poetry Society of Texas. My aunt read this aloud yesterday, to the high amusement of all of us (even my uncle!). Texans are hilarious (as are generalizations)!
Eighteen Days on the Ground
By Linda Banks
Can it be more than twenty years and still they speak
of snow that stayed so long upon the ground?
Eighteen days, they say, as if it just occurred.
Any snow at all is rare in northeast Texas.
When it comes, it comes and goes so quickly
that it seems a dream. But not that year, in 1983.
It came and stayed, and froze into a dirty ice
that gripped imagination in a vise from which
they could not free themselves. Only tongues
thawed and said over and over how long
it stayed. Folks tottered on the frozen ground
as they walked around discussing snow
with neighbors just as shocked as they.
My parents had a picture window six feet wide
through which they stared for eighteen days
as if they watched a marathon of old sitcoms.
I suppose it was the wonder of it all, one-time
phenomenon, that made this story last. I smile
at what I tell, and that I tell it once again.
Current Tea: Diva blend (Ceylon black tea with hints of hazelnut and chocolate)
