Charles Randall Stanfield in a Friday Evening, Sacred Singing’s Sabbath Service

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

“The kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish state of youth”

~ Charles Lamb

A snowstorm that you cannot quite begin

To picture in your brain starts forming, cold,

Just cold enough to send out one small, thin,

Six-pointed icy hope.  More like a scold

Than kiss, it warns you, or it would if you

Were not too young to read each crystal point.

Though delicate they do not try to turn you blue

With sorrow.  As they melt, their deaths anoint

With merry melancholy and confuse

Your mind and man’s crescendo organs so

You blink your way through poignancy.  You lose

Your innocence and flakes become dead snow.

  A fever formed of freezing mixed with wind

    Against your heart is like hot plasma thinned.