Snow is for Snow Statues:


This is a tribute to my mother who loved to sculpt snow statues.  In the winter, if the snow was just right, on Sunday, after working all week, she would sculpt snow statues.  My sister and I wished she were like other mothers who did "normal" things because sometimes she sculpted nude statues.  "Please put clothes on them,"  we would beg her, but she followed her own muse and made ephemeral statues made of snow.  Often there would be a theme:  Christmas, a creche; Valentine's Day, lovers holding hands behind a tree; and Easter bunnies.  The lover theme she did every year on Valentine's day; first holding hands, the following year presenting a Valentine's heart, and finally, the gentleman on his knee proposing.  The neighbors loved it and occasionally photographs of her work appeared in the paper.  I wrote this poem many years after her death.  The photograph inspired it.
                                        
                                                Snow Statues
     Smiling into the camera,
     my hands resting on my
     little sister's shoulders


     My mother asking us to smile
     as we squinted into the sun.


     She wanted to take 
     a picture of her creations,
     the three of us.


     I remember how she loved
     being outdoors,
     sculpting those statues,
     so many of them,
     so many different Sundays.


     As she worked, she and 
     Michelangelo 
     shared the same joy,
     as she sculpted, molding
     the snow into a thing of beauty.


     All those trillions of snowflakes
     transformed into art 
     and for a few hours,
     she forgot the pain
     inside the house.