Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

On Monday while making my way through banked snow, ice and ponds of water, I noticed as wonderful a snowman as I've seen in a long time.

While it lacked the coal eyes, the carrot nose, arms made from thin branches, and a scarf, the sculptors had made three nicely rounded balls of snow for the body and sculpted the eyes and mouth making a smiling snowman. I thought of the two young children with their mother I'd seen the day before near the same place, shovel in hand. Maybe it was them. 

Two days earlier I had read a perfect poem about a young boy and a snowman by the late Richard Wilbur. It makes it own kind of melancholy. I thought about winters past and snowmen I made or helped to make.

The February 9 issue of the 2019 New Yorker has a cartoon with a police car, lights blinking, two officers looking and in the yard they are passing are two snowmen. The caption is "I wish you could have thought up warmer disguises."  I can't find it on the web and with a lapsed subscription I don't have access anymore.