It’s been wildly snowy here in Minneapolis in a way that brings me straight back to childhood in far upstate New York, where we lived so far out in the country that the only lights at night were the ones inside our house.

If you went outside and looked up on a clear night, the sky wasn’t dark. It was a field of diamonds, strewn so thick that sometimes stars blurred into each other. You could see the Milky Way and sometimes the northern lights. On winter nights, if it were snowing –and it was always snowing, there in the foothills of the Adirondacks–those stars spun their way down to earth in the form of snowflakes.

This past week in the city brought childhood back to me. Endless shoveling. Laughing with my neighbors about where can we possibly put all this snow. The mesmerizing beauty of tree limbs weighted with snow. The hush. The calm. The stillness.

Snow, by Kevin Hart

Some days
the snow has taken me in
to know the time of snow, to live
inside a world so quiet

its music
is all a shimmering. Some evenings
when quite alone
I turn off every light

and watch the snow
enjoy the dark, moving lushly
through spiky air,
finding more time

in time
than when I stretch myself
and am
my father’s father. Oh yes,

there is
a sparkling choir, there surely is,
and dark ice air
through which we fall.

Click here for more information about Kevin Hart.

alisonmcghee.com

My podcast: Words by Winter