Bartholomew Barker, Poet

Snow Day
“Put on your coat. It’s freezing out there.”
– My mother

I woke to the ticker-tack of sleet
on my bedroom window
in the middle of a school night
after the weatherman had predicted
several inches.

How could I sleep on this snowday eve,
more magical that Christmas?

Even in the dim dawn
there was doubt, despite
the unblemished layer of white
outside. Radio on.

Anticipation builds
like my Boo Berry cereal
floating in the milk,
as I listened to boring news.

This was Ohio in the good ole days
when weather was never the lead
and they wouldn’t cancel for just any storm.

Wilmington City Schools are closed.

I leapt from the kitchen table
knocking over my chair
thinking only of snow forts
and sled races while my mother
struggled to bundle me up.

Then bolt through the front door
and leave my coat crumpled on the ground
to be lost under still falling snow.

(Written from this month’s Visual Poetry Prompt.)