The Memory of Snow

The Mill by Andrew Wyeth 1964

She remembered snow

snowmen

and snow ice cream

snow shovels

and snowballs.

Not everyone she knew

remembered snow

its feel

the way it melted on your tongue

or landed on your lashes.

Snow came no more

climate changed

her grandmother laughed

fanning herself

on the porch in Maine in December.

She once told great stories

about the last Arctic Vortex

and the six foot snow rabbit 

they fashioned that July

now she just sipped her iced tea

and fanned herself.

The memory of snow

just a wistful smile

and an album of yellowing photos

in the box she kept

under her bed.

J. Binford-Bell

January 2014