THE SNOWMAN POEMS**

by Richard Smyth



THE SNOWMAN (listen to mp3)

He’s always been there,
scattered about the ground,
wet and cold and waiting.
But it takes other peoples’ hands
to put him together,
to gather what is hidden
in the white landscape,
and make it something real.

Other peoples’ hands: even
through mittens and gloves
they are warm
and their warmth melts
the snow into the shape
of its becoming.

These are the moments
the Snowman remembers most:
the touching of the warm hands,
the smoothing over surfaces,
the warmth.
Then the cold comes again
and he is alone.
His body tightens like a fist,
his black eyes coal and hard,
staring.


THE SNOWMAN REMEMBERS THE FIREHOUSE (listen to mp3)

His father volunteered
for Steamer Company No. 1

The beer was cold,
the heads were white
and foamy,
the mugs were
icy.

This is where his father came
every week
instead of going to church.

The Snowman went with him
to learn what ice meant,
and the meanings of
absolute zero.


THE SNOWMAN GOES TO FLORIDA (listen to mp3)

The Snowman goes to Florida
to see the Mommy with
the eight breasts.
The Mommy is warm,
Florida is warm,
the white milk
is
warm.

He always starts to disappear
when he goes to Florida,
starts to puddle and moist.
Empty milk jugs capture
his spilling.
He might be mistaken for butter
milk, slush,
or
human
seed.

Upon returning to
the North,
it takes him weeks and weeks
to re-
member.


THE SNOWMAN WATCHES FIREWORKS (listen to mp3)

It’s the Fourth of July
before the Snowman knows
winter’s over.

He’s read about inertia
and the secret forces
of nature.

This is what holds him together
through the summer months:
the thinking and thinking.

You are allowed to forget
when you are thinking.
Overhead, the bombs are bursting in air.

Just beyond, the stars look like spilled milk.


THE SNOWMAN AND HIS HOT LOVER (listen to mp3)

They make love in glass houses.
When she touches him,
when she breathes her hot breath
on his body,
that’s when he starts to disappear.

He is lost and he won’t find himself
for years.

Look at how their breathing
condenses on the glass.


THE SNOWMAN WRITES ABOUT THE FIREMAN (listen to mp3)

Before the fire, before
the torch and the butane lighter,
before central heating and bonfires
and burning witches, there was the Fireman
who once had a refrigerator in his gut.
That's when he went to the gods and asked for fire.

“No,” they said. “First you must suffer.”
So the Fireman went to the devil and said,
“Please, sir, I’m here to suffer, so that I may have fire.”
“I remind you that fire changes things,”
said the devil. “Go see the alchemist.”
So the Fireman went to the alchemist and said,
“Please, sir, I’m here to be changed, so that I may have fire.”
“I remind you that fire cleanses things,”
said the alchemist. “Go see the priest.”
So the Fireman went to see the priest and said,
“Please, sir, I’m here to be cleansed, so that I may have fire.”
“I remind you that fire makes things,”
said the priest. “Go see the welder.”
So the Fireman went to see the welder and said,
“Please, sir, I’m here to be made, so that I may have fire.”
And so the welder made him with fire.
When he was done, he said,
“That will cost you an eye.”
And so a vulture came and plucked out his left eye.
Before sending the Fireman off with his fire, the welder said,
“My name is the gods. Don’t tell anybody.”
“Okay,” said the Fireman, but when he got home,
he wrote all about it in poems about a snowman.


THE SNOWMAN WRITES OF THE FIREMAN AND HIS FRIGID LOVER (listen to mp3)

He burns himself
he is a small sun
he needs no body
but his own.

The frigid lover shivers and shivers.
She needs somebody warm,
like the Fireman.
The Fireman remembers a time
before the fire, when he
was a snowman, when he
would shiver and shiver
and want a hot lover.

The Fireman looks up,
and the stars he sees are yellow.


THE SNOWMAN WRITES OF ASTRONOMY (listen to mp3)

Can you see him now, the Fireman,
there with his perfect lover,
spinning in the sky,
a binary star,

can you see them there,
bright and shining
in the forever morning
of their after birth?


THE SNOWMAN AMONG THE PUBLISHED (listen to mp3)

It is cold here among these poets:
for such moments the Snowman
wears a scarf with red plaid tassels.

They drink to the dead illustrious;
they bandy about the latest affairs
and suicides; they burn about

passion, the cold boiling point
of their love. Sometimes the Snowman
wants to be among them, to be

acknowledged. Sometimes the knife–edge
of fame cuts him like the sun in spring:
left on the ground only

a black cowboy hat, two diamond eyes,
three broken eggs, the red scarf,
one dumb puddle.


THE SNOWMAN IN AUTUMN (listen to mp3)

Here
on the edge of death
the Snowman smells the fallen leaves.
His time is coming
but has not come yet.
He is weary of the sun.

So close, so close the cold:
Christmas trees are for sale,
the paper bells hang in supermarkets,
ten thousand Santas shine their shoes,
men stand on corners ringing bells,
the night stretches its legs, and awakens.

The Snowman dwells on steam and rivers.


THE SNOWMAN AND THE BLIZZARD (listen to mp3)

You’d think he’d be like a
root in soil or
a star in space
as the snow falls and falls
all around.
You’d think he would embrace
this moment
the way mud hugs a boot
or lava bubbles up
from ocean bottoms.

But the Snowman
in a blizzard
cannot find himself.
All of the edges are gone:
he becomes the horizon
he is the center and circumference
he remembers when stars
fell like snow through the universe,
when light cried like a child
left alone in the dark.


THE SNOWMAN AT ADVENT (listen to mp3)

It’s cold and dark in December
by five o'clock.
The Snowman stands outside
of the bright church.
He has never been inside,
only so close he can see
through the windows
the children who built him before entering
that kingdom of heaven.
When the children look through
the stained glass,
the Snowman is red, yellow,
orange, purple:
the colors of fire
and sunset.


THE SNOWMAN AT SOLSTICE (listen to mp3)

Today is the shortest day
of the year.

It’s the day we see the bright white stars
the longest all year.

The Snowman knows the meanings
of time and timelessness:

he knows why it’s Christ mass
and why the rain becomes white

like milk. He knows why
the Druids dance in the darkness.

If he could, he would dance too.


THE SNOWMAN IN DECEMBER (listen to mp3)

Even though it’s Christmas
morning
the Snowman is still restless
Even though, in this
season of the sleeping seed
and the bright white star,
he has never been more whole
Even though he is
the color of mother's milk
Even tho


SNOWMAN SCULPTOR (listen to mp3)

Every February
the Snowman oils his chainsaw,
sharpens his chisels
and buys a block of ice.
He is an ice sculptor
and he joins the others once yearly
to carve a thing of great beauty.
The people come, bundled like fragile packages,
they behold the Snowman’s sculpture
and know, for a moment, the longing of the gods.

After they are long gone
and they are home with their TVs and candle bulbs,
the Snowman sees it slowly melt,
haunted by his loss.


SNOWMAN AWAKENING (listen to mp3)

One winter morning
the Snowman opens coal eyes
the ones that have known fire
and all that fire has touched:
the cold center of stone,
the leaping electron, holy bushes,
candles designated as sacred,
two bodies banging together like sex
and making sparks fly
into stars thick as myth
and just as high


WHAT THE SNOWMAN SAW UPON AWAKENING (listen to mp3)

When the Snowman opened his coal eyes
one winter morning
he saw that snow was all around him,
holding him tight like a testicle,
he saw snow as far as he could see,
covering everything: telephone poles,
dead birds, blue bins filled with old news,
the cold swingset, all the parked cars.
He saw children coming from afar
bringing sleds and wedding bells,
long white dresses, silver candlesticks,
perfect diamonds.


SNOWMAN AGONISTES (listen to mp3)

Someone stole his eyes.
Someone plucked them from his face,
threw them in a fireplace.
But the Snowman is okay:
he knows what darkness is,
he was born in the dark,
he is cousin to the ice cube
and the arctic circle.
He has studied the geometries of isolation.

Somewhere, two grey coals are smoldering.


THE SNOWMAN THINKS OF PLATO (listen to mp3)

Sometimes
the Snowman grows tired
of the cold.

He knows the stars are hot.
He knows they are too far.

He remembers being a star.
He thinks of returning to the sky.

This is his wish
to be long gone
and forgotten.


THE SNOWMAN PLAYS WITH FIRE (listen to mp3)

You don’t have to worry
that the Snowman owns
knives, guns, sleeping pills.

These mean nothing to a man
made of ice cold snow.

It’s when he begins to
play with fire—that’s
when you should worry

when you see his eyes
light up like stars
when he stares up at the night sky.


THE SNOWMAN CONTEMPLATES THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE (listen to mp3)

The Snowman studies physics,
quantum gravity, theories
of supersymmetry and the beauties
of math.

He accepts the limits of thermodynamics.
He knows he is a product of
universal entropy.

He imagines one big puddle
of quarks and leptons shivering
with heat, then slowing into
something solid,
the same way he has come together
in a winter of discontent.

The Snowman senses that
the universe is getting tired.
Someday it will stop shivering
to stay warm. Someday
it will be at peace.


THE SNOWMAN GOES TO HELL

Unlike Christ,
he does not come to steal souls.
Unlike Dante,
he is not led by reason
personified in the form
of an ancient epic poet.
Upon arrival, upon
liquefaction,
the Snowman flows
straight through hell,
a white river,
a total of 99 moistures
in which the hellions
cool their calloused soles.
He flows straight to
the center of the earth,
where Satan is lodged in ice.

This is where he belongs.
He is comfortable here.

He gathers himself together
to wait in line behind Judas.
He will be waiting there forever.



**Nine of the "Snowman Poems" were originally published in THE HAMLINE REVIEW 20 (Spring 1996): 36-42.

© 2000 Richard Smyth
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