Waiting for the Snow

Snow. You can smell it in the air. Early this year.
You stare out the window, waiting, breath held,
for the first flake.

The last year has been lost.
Sickness. Recovery. Plague. Loss
have swallowed it. Life happened around you

but far too much was swallowed by pain
and the slow workings of your heart.
Only now you emerge, a hungry child again.

Hungry to feel it all, experience it all,
the lost things are lost.
But there is plenty ahead. Life is far more abundant

than the broken admit. I have lost the year
but not my soul. It has healed into something new,
far too childlike for my wrinkles and gray hair.

Perhaps the first snow of your new year is not today.
But it is coming. Life is inevitable, and if you let it,
so is joy.

About this poem

I have taken to call this past year my “lost year.”. It is not that there was not life and joy in it. There was that and love and laughter, but so much was lost, so many things not done, trips not made, opportunities not taken. My body and the world wreaking havoc on my normal. Only in the last little bit of time do I feel like I have come back to myself.

It is not my first lost year. And I can tell you this, being back is always sweet. And so is the coming back. If we let it be. The journey my friends. Always the journey.

Be well,

Tom

PS: The picture was taken at Mass MoCA. It was taken the second time my love and I went there. Yes, I remember every trip. She has made life that memorable.