“The human body is 61.8 percent water by weight.”
By Friday all across the Old Deer Park
in the grey dawn light
the scattered remains of snowmen
loomed out of the frozen mist
like the ancient ruins
of a Megalithic temple.
For last Monday, families gathered here
in their hundreds, and knelt in the snow for hours,
truant executives with their children
and built from the snow of the ground
fragile and frozen men.
The air filled with laughter,
and hands burnt with cold -
compelled to gather and sculpt
an image of themselves
from the pure white unbroken fields of ice.
Is it a kind of worship?
To kneel and stare
at this white line of fragile beauty
to mould a mirror image of ourselves.
And wonder at its strangeness.
To make and stand before ourselves
anew and clean -
a late Christmas gift.
© David Loffman
22 March 2009
