No Snow Day

November 22, 2008
IRW

How many “covers the ground like a blanket” poems
must we endure before
May’s rescue from
chilled and many-times-rewarmed similes?

Have you noticed how many little girls
are named April, May, June, Julia?
I’ve even met an Augusta.
But never a February.
Although, what they were thinking
when they named someone April,
I’m not sure.
Does it mean that she’s cold,
and prone to tantrums?

Do they, south of the equator,
name their children November
and January, to remind them
of the sun in the chilling depths
of a Montevideo June?

Better to name her Rhiannon,
that she can run with the wild horses
all the year long.

Or Ray, to warm us
during the bottomless chill
of the seemingly-endless winter.

Ray, who now laments
that it doesn’t, in fact,
cover the ground like a blanket,
and he must go to school.
One flake short of a blizzard,
and he is condemned to sit, wishing
he was outside in the cold snow,
wishing he was inside
in front of a warm fire,

rather than outside in the cold snow,
wishing the opposite.