Footprints and Snow

Tonight while carrying groceries, I glance at my footprints in the freshly fallen snow. With each snowfall I am sad to sully the still perfect white. But I am late with children to feed and the snow is wet and cold on my face.

For a senior year poetry class in college, I wrote "A Memory of Snow". At the end of the course my professor remarked that it was the "most moving "of the semester although it still needed work. I have yet to finish it...

The poem is lonely. I have always been melancholy over footprints in the snow.

Making soup in the kitchen I look out my window at the white pouring from the sky. Through the streetlight, the flakes sparkle. Still I feel sad because life is different. Just my children and I on a snowy night. The kitchen is messy and I still have a pantry of food to put away.

Dad playing games with the children....keeping the fire warm.
Mom finishing dinnerand starting cocoa. Kids laughing over plans to sled.

All of us.

Alone I am lucky to keep a candle lit and to find one pair of matching gloves.

One child whines there is no hot chocolate although I know it was among the bags. I throw on my boots and shuffle to the car in hopes of finding the missing box. Sure enough, it had fallen on the floor.

Grabbing the cocoa, I slam the car door and walk toward my porch where I notice the footprint has disappeared under a new layer of shimmery white. I smile.


and the snow falls