A Sonnet Saluting Lady Snow
Snow is a rainfall in frozen repose;
Rainbow rich in hues, delicate its shape
After lightning strikes; its thunder echoes.
There is still tension in each crystal flake.
Snow rings down, a chintzy, folding curtain,
On worlds still steeped in a dark translucence.
It makes an endless, crystal clear pattern.
Sifting through as nature shows her essence.
Snow is a noble lady’s soul, so bold
As she confronts the price of her command.
The cutting edge of its own driving cold.
It fashions from her being, her high demand.
The feminine sculpts out her radiant face,
A woman’s world because men know their place.
A Snake in All Our Eden
Man once moved through his world bright as the sun.
His mate reclined, remotely calm, at one
With the valley anointed by its streams;
Where predators shared shade with trembling beams.
Eyes pierced through carpets of winged-seeded cones.
They dropped like fruit; alluring as gem stones.
She trailed silver lines, pursuing her whims.
The earth was her loom, the apple of her sins.
She disarmed angels with a burning flare.
Snake hypnotized all with a pointed stare.
She had sought out her Eve; her soul sister;
Darkness was arraigned with a strange power.
Like a knife that pierced the world’s own center
Reptile beckoned woman and imbued her
With wickedness; she stirred new restlessness.
Man and mate bowed before a new conscience.
What might have been their Eden was ensnared
By new desires. Beneath dark skies they fled.
They sought out and sucked deep with quenchless breaths,
Abandoned until the day of their deaths.
Mike Scheidemann published four anthologies and was President of Voices; The Israel English Poetry Assoc. for 17 years. He was also senior coordinator of two international poetry conferences in Israel, one sponsored by UNESCO.
Featured Image: “Morning Snow” by Jeremy Sams.
Jeremy Sams’ Morning Snow
The winter, leafless forest, bathed in a purple glow,
beside a winding stream, is coppery in hue,
in Jeremy Sams’ quiet painting Morning Snow.
What is there not ideal from his point of view?
Above, the white sky filters through the woodland trees,
so thin and narrow rising, wriggling, real and true,
their twiggy branches hovering above the stream,
and covered with a sprinkling of finest snow.
It is so still there doesn’t seem to be a breeze.
The light reflected in the smoothe, but running, flow
of water shows those trunks, white ripples, and sun’s gold,
all crossed by fallen branches of some time ago.