Old Snow

Richard Sanger
From:   Shadow Cabinet. Montreal: Véhicule Press,1996.

And perhaps you remember still
the snowdrifts
that winter we were boys,
the snowdrifts you showed us
as high as the windowsill?

For the listeners in Trois-Rivières,
Gilles Vigneault was singing
Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays,
C'est l'hiver
and the words went to frost on his whiskers.

We had porridge round the breakfast table,
the eight o'clock weather report
saying school was on, school was off,
as you force-fed us
those amber drops of cod liver oil.

And there were icicles in the window
and we were your four little Indians
as you watched the thermometer,
the winter fall down on winter
and the snows, the snows of twenty-below.

Or are our slushy tracks through the house,
the mitts, toques and scarves we lost
and all the things I forgot
what come back? The open door,
the fishy swill coughed up in my mouth?

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Richard Sanger's works copyright © to the author.