Lake Effect

At times like this, it just doesn’t seem fair. One day, westerly winds roar across Lake Superior, dumping the inevitable lake-effect snows on the hapless Keweenaw. Next day, a huge low-pressure center slides up from the country’s midsection, bringing a ten-degree rise in temperatures and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico – which descends upon us from the southeast as 24 inches of heavy wet snow. Next day, as the low pressure center passes, the winds swing west again and then from the north, bringing more than a foot of additional lake-effect snow. It just doesn’t seem fair, you know?

While shoveling, scooping, and blowing the snow last night, this poem formed in my half-frozen mind. The flakes flying up inside the hood of my parka, to form an ice-dam on my mustache, teased my face with their tiny, rimy, raw, and polar touch. I was becoming part of the lake effect…

Mick

Lake Effect

From Canada, the dry cold winds sweep down
And tenderly kiss the Lake with parched breath -
Lacing their breezes with soft sleeted down,
Dancing a winter's ice ballet of death.
Hopelessly thick with the white blowing chaff,
Squall lines descend upon sheltering homes -
Shaking their walls with a mad howling laugh,
Chanting ice litanies from glacial tomes.
Ceaselessly swirling, the bright dancing ice
Touches a face with crystalline fingers,
Memories - soft, swift, and silent entice
A skin-tightening tingle that lingers…
Coolly reminding us: what the winds take
Touches us, and then returns to the Lake.

Mick McKellar
December 2007