The World of their Father’s Purity
“The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!” ~ “Snow-bound” ~ John Greenleaf Whittier
His family fled Chicago storms of snow
And settled on a cape of near white sand,
Not quite as white as salt-white foam, waves’ glow
Beneath Canaveral skies. Above the strand
Of beach loomed snow-like clouds he called his range
Of mountains in the flatness of the scene;
So snow banks filled a part of him, not strange
To him, a boy whose heart was blizzard clean,
A man whose heart was purer than the ice
Abandoned with the slaughter houses of
The north. He spoke the poetry that vice
Had never touched. He spoke a bard-like love.
He did not have to say he loved four sons.
He hugged them in white memory of shore suns.
~ Phillip Whidden