Snow Day
Written for “singspiration” / an apocalypse poem.
Let’s pretend that it’s snowing,
global warming turned to global warning,
A Great Wall of Grey beyond the horizon rumbles towards us like a giant gloomy ocean,
We rush out of our front doors
shivering in flannel pyjamas and t-shirts
while the glowing TV inside warns us to stay indoors
We raise our phones up like lighters as we race to document the event
of the pregnant storm swallowing an Ellen DeGeneres blue sky
until cloud everest blankets the world in a suffocating good night
If this is the end of the world
we didn’t imagine it would feel like this
sockless feet in clammy sneakers
and goosebumps on our features
Because when the snow began to fall
the flakes reminded us of memories
floating down one by one, faint phonetic delivery
until they pour in ceaseless fevery
The snowfall show-all of our past
The featured film, rated ‘A’ for all of us
the number one hit in holy cinemas
with VIP tickets for two
God and you
as you sit back together and watch the storm of sins
cover the world
and there will be no where to hide
as snow begins to fill in all the edges of the city
side walks and roads merge
Streetcars like sleeping beetles begin to disappear
Every chinatown alley wiped off the map
Bloor is buried by the bulk of
white winter’s wrath
Yonge is howling as the wind
squeezes through slim sections of sky scrapers,
this is the Santa Claus parade that makes us all afraid
On that Christmas when we wished for fortune
we wished for wizards
the day God decided to turn our sins into a blizzard.
And when the storm stops,
when the terrible documentary of your life fades out
and God pauses, right before the credits,
you will hear your heart beating in your ears
like the silence before everyone in the theatre
realizes the movie is over,
But you know that this time that silence will never end
And all you see on the screen is a scene of everything you’ve ever loved
covered in snow
You will walk through the different shades of white which were once streets,
mouthing their names on your numb lips pretending to map them in the piles of ice
as you search for the beginning of anything in the endless expanse of white
If you could look God in the face,
would you resist
would you say
The snow apocalypse?
This is it?
Where is the fire?
Where is the brimstone ?
Where are the sinners screaming for forgiveness?
Where is Jesus flying down in his blazing entourage ?
Where are the trumpets, the angels, the wrath of God?
Because even Noah got to hear the waves lapping against his ark,
no one ever warned you about this part
that your sins would be so silent.
that every excuse you screamed would slip and disappear in the silent icy slopes.
Then one by one the flakes will fall again,
freezing the tears on your face, as you brace yourself for the end
But this time the prequel shows on screen,
to the scene when the beginning of the end was born,
that stranger in a manger is your savior,
and God, who sits beside you,
who holds your soul in the hollow of his hold,
is the father of that staring role,
because if our sins are snow then His son is salt,
and his final act melted away all our faults,
if you had known the end of the world would feel like this,
like hope living in your soul’s stony precipice,
like spring whispering on the edges of the winter’s gloomiest
would you have wasted your life
lying in the snow?
When all this time Jesus was calling you inside
to keep you out of the cold.