Cruel Snow

I was where I am when the snow began, on a lonely path across a field. The silence of snow is like no other, which is why I stood still, enjoying the gentle whisper of the first flakes. The snow grew heavier and the field soon disappeared under its blanket.

I started to walk again, my boots sinking into white, leaving black holes in a meandering track behind me. The path was gone. I tugged my hat down further over my ears, pulled up my collar and tightened my scarf. Scanning the landscape, I could see no landmarks, no clues as to where I was, which direction led to home.

I am where I was when the snow began, cruel snow that landed on my lashes, burned my fingers and slid down my neck, in the middle of a field on a lonely path.

Kim M. Russell, 4th December 2023

Image by RK on Unsplash

This Monday Merril is our host for Prosery at the dVerse Poets Pub. She says that, ‘since it is December and winter in the Northern Hemisphere’ she though she’d pull a line from a winter poem. It’s from ‘The Dead of Winter’ by Samuel Menashe:

“I was where I am
When the snow began”

I had not heard of Samuel Menashe, so I was interested to read about him, and that he published only a few volumes of poetry, which were ‘highly regarded by critics, who admired his tight wording and concise poems’, something we also like at dVerse. So we are including Menashe’s words in a piece of flash-fiction or creative non-fiction, but not poetry, which is no longer than 144 words in total (not including the title).

39 thoughts on “Cruel Snow”

  2. Thank you for this evocative piece, Kim. “The silence of snow is like no other” is so true. I don’t know why that is.
    I like how this begins as a serene piece before the snow turns cruel and perhaps frightening.

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    1. Thank you, Mary. That snowman was me as a child. A group of older children pelted my five year old self with snow on the way home from school. My mother was shocked when she found me with blue lips, covered in snow.

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  10. A chilling and unique story. It makes me appreciate the dangers of snow, when mostly due to inexperience I think of it as magical. Great story.
    Actually I was watching a video yesterday about the first snow in Glasgow and all the little snow people dotted everywhere, sitting on park benches etc…It so appealed to the child in me.

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  16. I enjoyed hearing this Kim, I particularly like this because it is – for me – a poem to feel. A sense of adventure but also foreboding – the path that disappears (and which I took th epoem to be a metaphor for life’s journey).

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