I love the whimsical way this develops like a slowly falling snowflake
Snow may sometimes be an inconvenience and a bore, as many will have experienced this winter but it is also playful, wondrous and beautiful. And all too much in danger of disappearing. It is for these reasons and many more that ‘Love Song for Snow’ by Michelle Diaz is IS&T’s final Pick of the Month for 2025.
Michelle Diaz has been published in numerous journals, both online and in print. Her debut pamphlet The Dancing Boy was published in 2019 by Against the Grain Press. Her new pamphlet Raising Ghosts is due out in 2026. This is the second time that she has been voted as an IS&T Pick of the Month, the first being for October 2023 with ‘The Sorry Letter’.
Love Song for Snow
I carried you in my heart to Central Park,
you burnt my face as I walked past Wonderland Alice.
She wore you like a hat and coat.
I’ve been missing you again.
Truth be told—I can’t live without you.
Because of childhood.
Because of things I buried in you.
I can’t live without you.
I’m trapped knee-high in childhood snow.
I love the way you slow everything down to noticing.
As a child, I became a sort of God—sculpting people,
crowning you with hats, muffling you with scarves.
I handled your rawness without gloves.
And falling face down into you as snow angel
always felt like a good thing.
You know the coldest parts of me,
and the things that melt me too.
They should erect a museum dedicated to you.
Just in case we ever lose you.
Voters comments included:
‘Love Song for Snow’ gets my vote because of the way it seamlessly connects the personal and immediate with wider ecological concerns. The snow is always real, tangible, down to the pleasure of making a snow angel and the numbness of hands; the sense of personal loss runs like a watermark through it; and the grief we are beginning to feel for a planet we are overheating haunts us with its presence too.
I loved the child’s relationship with snow and becoming ‘a sort of God’. Also the line ‘I handled your rawness without gloves’ – so much conveyed in 6 words
It hit me in my chest.
I love the evocative language used in this poem and its call to childhood.
It feels emotionally honest and feels both personal and universal—tender, nostalgic, and quietly profound.
Exquisitely evocative language
Very moving, visual and immediate
It’s sense of memory, location and weather.
Because it’s about so much more than snow, yet there’s that childlike innocent joy.
Tactile, beautiful work.
An evocative and relatable poem with beautiful, vivid images.
The imagery and depth, choice of words and language.
The ending made me catch my breath!
A most beautiful, moving poem about what snow means and represents to the poet
Wonderful imagery and sound
I entered into the poem, it drew me right in. I loved the mini narratives in it, the memories, the textures. It was like being wrapped in a warm, fluffy blanket of snow…… before it melts! How can we make snow last longer? Like the idea of a museum.
Encapsulates the beauty and sadness of the elements.
Snowmen. I love the whimsical way this develops like a slowly falling snowflake
it is vivid and autobiographical with clear reference to the pain of our current ecological crisis. Great imagery which is simple but goes right to the heart of the subject.
I enjoyed the blend of symbolism, reminiscence in this poem that attaches itself to the metaphysical life.
Love the mix of emotional sometimes painful depth and humour
Michelle Diaz ‘ Love Song for Snow’ is a beautiful and extremely evocative poem, touching a deep yearning for lost innocence.A childhood longing for something that’s tangible yet all too soon is lost in life’s journey. Something so fragile, melting away but leaving one with a memory that attaches itself to the soul.
I like the direct double address to both snow and someone loved and lost, the grief that evokes. The experience conveyed of how hard acceptance is when you miss someone so much. It seems the snow and the missed person point back to childhood, a time of innocence and relative happiness. The ending, the idea of snow in a museum took a lurch into troubling notions of climate change. We would miss the snow if it vanished for ever, mourn it.
Editing intern Sairah Ahsan wrote, on shortlisting: This poem marries nostalgia with anticipatory grief. As the very nature of seasonality shifts in step with the climate crisis, this poem ties that crisis with the personal and cultural relationships with place that we are losing.
THE REST OF THE DECEMBER 2025 PICK OF THE MONTH SHORTLIST
Napsack
A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.
A dragonfly perches
atop a little asphalt hill
but zips off when the hill twitches
and sniffs the air.
“Perhaps, it is thataway?” suggests Pooh Bear.
A sand-swimming golden mole,
Cryptochloris wintoni,
has resurfaced after 86 years
hiding in the ‘thought extinct’ subsection
of the desertified dunes.
Exasperated Owl sighs. “How about
this one,” he posits to Befuddled Pooh,
“What do you get if you move
the ‘h’ from the end
to the beginning of earth?”
Wondrous thoughts wander through tunnels.
An unmarked bend masks a dead-end
hung with a huge landscape.
High up, honeypot ants dangle
their distensions and echo a riddle around.
“Huh?” says Pooh.
“Precisely – ‘h’” confirms Owl.
The bear with his seemingly head of air
scratches it ponderingly
and glances about for a clue.
Wild thoughts thunder through wheat stubble.
A daring russet dog is bounding loudly –
a big bad wolf outstripping its pack, clacking at –
hearing a whistle it turns on its heels
and transforms back into the teddy bear.
“A biscuit?” enquires Pooh,
peering down into the straw-strewn sod.
“Always thinking with your tummy,”
scolds Rabbit. Owl warbles
“A worthy guess, but now think laterally!”
The thought trees slough off their skins.
Tiggery leaves zigzag zoomily
across a hundred acres of wood,
crocheting a quilt over the broad bed of earth
and tucking themselves in.
Pooh rootles through the gold litter
and comes up clutching a
part-wheat-part-meat heart-shaped treat.
“Pooh’s got the answer!” hoots Owl.
“I do?” queries Pooh.
A raincloud scuds up and flurries down,
splashing the meandering moon.
A donkey drags a brash brush,
sweeping up the setting sun.
The dog is licking my face awake.
Owl concludes, “When you move
the ‘h’ from the end to the beginning
of earth, you get heart.”
Solemnly nodding, Pooh adds
“And rounded is quite grounded.”
Toby Cotton is a poet currently pursuing an MA in creative writing at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. His work appears in Pearl Press, Wildfire Words and Boundby and he helps to edit GossamerWight Literary Magazine.
*
Parable
For thirty years, O Lord, we have lived
in a house without foundations.
And now it is
Christmas again, we drape lights
from the living apple tree to the dead one,
haul o come o come from the piano,
set the innumerable specials, the host
of appearances, to record.
Here comes the flood.
Here comes the storm.
A gingerbread house
hurled on the kitchen floor, a torrent
of rage, frustration, the meter showing
rising levels, below the still
unbroken membrane.
And neither sand
nor rock, but clay.
Thus, today
we swaddle the sausage meat in pastry
and lay gifts at the font of the Nordmann,
and gaze at the light from our widowed neighbour.
John Greening: A Bridport and Cholmondeley winner with over twenty collections, including The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977-2022, he’s edited Arnold, Grigson, Blunden, Crichton Smith and Fanthorpe, plus several anthologies. Latest books areA High Calling (Renard) and Rilke’s New Poems.
*
Eating Apple Pie with Louisa May Alcott
When the genie appears, I’m in a frivolous
mood. First request? My mom’s apple pie.
Genie, exceeding expectations, delivers it
hot. As steam rises from slits in its cinnamon
dusted crust, I cut two slices. One for me.
One for Louisa, my hero. My second wish.
Yes, I tell her. Those are golden delicious
apples. We used to pick them from the orchard
behind our house. The whole forest’s a subdivision
now, but Genie tells me nothing’s impossible
when he’s around. Louisa eats while I ramble.
Would you sign my copy of Little Women?
She marvels at the ballpoint pen I hand her.
I always wanted to be Jo, you know? A writer,
nonconformist— Louisa, clicking the Bic
in her hand, laughs, dismisses: As you wasted
wishes on trivialities—dessert and necromancy,
I’d say you are more of an Amy. I gasp as if
she’s slapped me. Use my last wish to tell
Genie: Take Louisa May Alcott away.
Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has appeared in The Sunlight Press, ONE ART, Feminine Collective, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of New Orleans. Website: https://paularhilton.com/
*
Chant
after Ammar Aziz
At dawn and dusk, my father
becomes a chant, that flies above
the courtyard of the old house
by the river, where only the men
recite Sanskrit prayers by lamplight,
as though in a divine trance,
to Gayatri, consort of the twilight sun.
Do they glimpse the goddess
in flecks of light that fall
into the lap of darkness?
Do they mimic the timbre
of the stars that ride on
the back of the earth woman?
What prayers are these, hymns
to a goddess incarnate in a mantra,
hymns that shut out real women?
Note: The Gayatri mantra is a Hindu hymn chanted during twilight hours to the goddess, who personifies the mantra.
Indian born Usha Kishore is a British poet and translator, resident on the Isle of Man. Usha is widely published and has authored three collections of poetry (the latest being Immigrant, Eyewear 2018). She recently completed her PhD in Postcolonial Poetry with Edinburgh Napier University. www.ushakishore.co.uk
*
The Approach of the Cailleach
the hazel’s green heart
fades at my touch
slips to a spotted ochre
mistress of abscission
I exhale pure frost
force the shedding
of the leaf
even the sun in its tracks
stops short —
the dark night lengthens
and the wick of my veins
burns blue
snow startles
from my fingertips
and the word itself
embraces no —
two arms encircle
emptiness
in this white space
I work to preserve
to keep the dead held
in a coat of ice
to overwinter the hedgehog
and still the bats in the eaves
to curb the bud and the bulb
yes, you fear my coming
but to you I bring clarity
what now
but yourselves unadorned
straining towards light
Note: The Cailleach is the goddess/hag of winter in Celtic mythology
Fiona Larkin was the winner of the National Poetry Competition 2024. Her debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published by Pindrop Press in 2023. The title poem was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Her pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (Rack Press, 2020). @fionalarkin.bsky.social Website: fionalarkinpoetry.wordpress.com