Snowman
For Raymond Briggs
Snow has come to our valley.
It is deep as the river and dry as ashes of water.
Two tiny boys follow us up the path.
They don’t complain of the dazzle up to their thighs
but stagger about, drunk with the taste of it.
On the hill we find snow that lifts up in chunks like marble.
We build them a lord among snowmen.
We even make him arms and legs
because they want him to come alive, like the pictures.
They crawl off in their bodies’ depth of white
and fly away with the snowman.
We visit places in our dreams too.
Tonight I am giant Gulliver, and fly to Germany,
stop a river by filling it with sand,
make a wall of it and plant out English flowers.
I wake in puzzle and despair,
I cry into my baby’s eyes,
and feel another fall, in a future
where children crawl through caustic yellow ash.
Our world is not true to the snowman.
also published in ‘Stand’