Hello

It's Michael here.

When my eldest son (now in his late 30s) was small, we sat together one afternoon to watch The Snowman film.

At the end of it he burst in to tears and proclaimed how much he wanted it to be real. It told me a great deal about his inner world and how powerful the imagination can be.

I have to confess there is something about the loneliness of that little boy in the film that touches something in me also.

To this end I wrote the following poem which, given the warnings regarding global warming, may just become a distant memory of how winter could be experienced. It's my Xmas gift to our community.

A Place in the Sun

Crafted by frozen hands on an ice-cream landscape,

The snowman stands like Buddha, still and knowing.

A combed smile, coal black, fractures his round head,

His carrot nose guards satsuma eyes.

Like a precious gift, shrouded in tissue, he is kept warm

By scarf, buttons, and crooked, battered hat.

He shifts uneasily in the morning sun, shedding frozen tears,

By night he keeps his promise to 'be there' in the morning.

In the cold darkness, whilst the world sleeps warmly,

The snowman, rigid like an icicle sees and hears all.

His young maker, waking from a nightmare dream screams,

Breaking the frozen silence like a glass bell shattering.

Then stillness; as Orion and Gemini march across the sky

Dragging their black anvil of darkness towards the West.

The world turns as slow as an albatross

Raising a spectrum towards the jagged horizon and the snowman's eyes.

Daybreak, launching the siren sun, strains his frozen heart,

Dissolving his shape and will to survive and

Like the dreams of his maker, built upon a whispered promise,

He slowly melts and becomes one with their warm tears.

Michael

A Moodscope member.