Snow
Winter comes with the half-remembrance of rain
and the sudden opening out of the city
into wide white vistas of snow.
A trail of footprints through unsullied whiteness,
brings a memory of shuffling home frozen-footed
where orange street light
created pools and shallows in icy gardens
and birds had left their twiggy signatures on the tops of cars.
Tonight will freeze the city beneath a brittle crust,
skid the cars onto frozen pavements,
wind the city down to “slow”:
as if it’s had its mouth stuffed full of snow
or the night has raised a finger to its lips to hush us,
as if the sky has whispered “no”.
Julia Webb
Snow
Those were our summer days
but some were wintry
as snow
somehow we continued to grow
as men made
from snapped sticks
and stones
so far as I know
most are still standing
though some
fell
over or
froze
as angel wings
Paul McGrane
*Julia Webb is a poet living in
Norwich. She has a degree in Creative Writing from Norwich University of
the Arts and a Creative Writing MA from The University of East Anglia.
*Paul McGrane's poems have been published in Aesthetica, city lighthouse (the current tall-lighthouse anthology), The Delinquent, Nutshell, South Bank Poetry and Alight Here, the online project finding poems and images inspired by each of London’s 270 underground stations.