Voices from the Heartland presents poet Diane Glancy reading "Snow," which is a reflection on the Halloween blizzard of 1991.

This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

Transcript:

(00:00:00) In 1991 it snowed on Halloween by the next morning. There was 13 inches on the ground that afternoon 28 had fallen when I pushed open the front door banging it several times with my weight before it would open. I knew the sweet smell of broken fur limbs. There was silence except for a high wind in the trees. The birds sat on the fence to be fed. They remembered last winter, but I didn't have birdseed. Rifts in the yard were higher than the 28 inches that fell I couldn't even Wade through them. The snow was packed to the windows along the front of my house. The bush is open to the sky. I shoveled one layer from the walk at a time. There was news of cars and buses and snow plows stuck. It was Armistice Day 1940. The last know anyone could remember like it. My yard had been full of leaves before the snow. I had raped some of them and put the sacks in the back of New station wagon, I wrecked the others in a makeshift pile and drove to the compost on Pierce Butler route the afternoon it started to snow but the compost was closed on Thursday. So the leaves stayed in the back of my car in the garage, you know, sometimes you're caught off guard especially if you're from somewhere where there isn't much snow and they call you from Oklahoma laughing though. Some are worried your aunt who doesn't think you should have gone to Minnesota. Anyway, though. It's the best job. You ever had and you say you're all right, though a depression comes with it. You remember the time in Iowa when you were there for a year and snow fell and the cold held on and you watch the bird shivering in the bush outside your window and you suddenly found yourself crying because of the harshness of the world and how does anyone survive anyway except By An Almighty hand when you're out shoveling you see the rabbit tracks and know the animals are hungry and dismayed as You and you can't get your car out of the garage a snow plow came through the alley and packed it against the door and your car with leaves in it. Can't get out. You can't walk to the store a mile away because the street and the sidewalks are full of snow and it's like waiting at the shore of a large ocean. You think of the old people and a friend calls a man you dated and would still like to get back to you and he says he'll shovel your walk and take you to the store and out to eat and And you say okay and you think of the people who have no one and you sink lower your headaches and you feel insignificant in the universe and what's wrong with that you get a perspective in the snow you think of dying and someone finding you days later. It never hurts to think of death snow reminds you of it. It keeps you from getting comfortable. You know how large the odds you're up against our and you feel the veneer of civilization, but that's the way it is. And your ancestor survived at least until they procreated and then the next generation and the next and here you are your children already out in the world and you can leave and the next day when the friend arrives you think bless him and you buy bird seed and some Staples at the grocery and you even think in 28 inches of snow that's nearly up to your Park in places where it's drifted and pulled all your bushes down. You'll be all right all the way through winter into spring.