Snowflake Man (dedicated to Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley)

You were born an original, don’t die a copy. John Mason

Sudden and silent,
a hushed rush of white,
falling from heaviest heaven.

Chaotic crystals of luminous light.
The day holds its breath,
lifts its head.

Frozen but fragile,
so softly they bite,
as Jericho’s snowflake man
rescues his jewels.
He hurries through flurries,
to capture, to save,
then watches each masterpiece melt.

And deep in December,
he dies for his art,
braves one blizzard too far
with his battered log books.
What he saw in the snowflakes,
he showed to a world
who just had no patience to look.

Runaways

Run away with me.

We’ll drive down roads
with old stone walls.
We’ll close our eyes
by waterfalls,
and listen.

You’ll show me how to skim a stone
and how to pick the perfect one.
I’ll catch the icy river ripples,
frozen like February in my phone.

We’ll walk through woods
with secret seats,
that whisper words
like poetry.

And then we’ll climb through crumbling castles,
on stairs that wind through distant times,
to watch the world from a stony view,
to see anew with ancient eyes.

And at the end of our adventure,
when reality returns in shivery slivers,
we’ll hide in the shadow of the unicorn without a horn
and rest our winter-sun scorched eyes.
And as his colour fades
so will the light from our secret day.

In darkness we’ll drive back
To cul-de-sacs and damp and debt,
We’ll crawl into our bed
And dream of freedom.