Blizzard Poem | Instantaneous Transformation

Blizzard Poem
For the Boston Yeti
Aaron Devine

Neighbors and a Yeti emerge
when all else is hidden. Newly we see

our shovels rise together
as children dive daringly on the drifts.

Time to thaw out verbs like romp and hunker down,
sing Snow Day, Snow Day--like no day, I know.

Newly we play, and thar he plows:
our wild Yeti id, reminding us how to chill

and go with the snow. He was here all along,
but we needed blindness to find this

layer of track. We follow. Sometimes
it takes a blizzard; sometimes Mother Nature

gives us all a timeout. Kids,
this is how it feels to submit

with Irish coffee. This is how it feels
under the white flag. Blissfully bundled,

we help each other dig out again.
Not unlike a lockdown,

we meet each other
in absence.

Not unlike a forgot sound:
when we played King of the Mountain

not to win, but to fall
fearlessly on snow like forgiveness.

The Instantaneous Transformation of Light, collage by Bill Wolak

Author's note:
"I wrote this after the Snowpocalypse blizzards of 2015 and for the Boston Yeti (who appeared the same year). Somewhere in the sounds and the silence, I was also reflecting on the citywide lockdown that followed the Boston Marathon bombing two years before."

Aaron Devine teaches writing at UMass Boston and co-founded the Write on the DOT reading series in Dorchester where he lives. Find him online at www.aarondevine.net and @aajamde on Twitter.

Louis Frank indulges his creative impulses through his refrigerator magnet factory and anything you hear on soundcloud.com/Lou-hand-ball

Bill Wolak has just published his fifteenth book of poetry entitled The Nakedness Defense with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared recently in Naked in New Hope 2017 and The 2017 Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

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