Winter officially starts in about a month, but snow is everywhere in Calgary right now. The first snow of the year is so enchanting, but slowly and surely, with dirt and melting, the snow turns into a grey nasty slush that does nothing but gets your socks wet and cold. However, just after it first falls, and before it degrades, you can see footprints in the snow. Single footprints, many footprints, it doesn’t really matter to us. But these footprints mean something to the ones who made them. This poem is about those footprints.
Walking, waiting
Waking in the winter wind.
To a sight seen before.
Fresh snow on the ground.
Soft, smooth, sweetly soothing
Like a blanket, on the floor.
A gentle cold touch,
Drifting down from the sky,
Cast off from the heavens,
Flowing in the wind’s sigh.
Covering things we wish to cover
Sins that have been seen.
All the times we fell and failed.
Or faded to a dead brown, from a lush green.
Some patches of snow
Are marked with sets of footsteps
Some with many, some with one.
But even alone, steps tells a story.
A tragedy? A comedy?
Who knows which way this will run?
Some steps stand in solitude
Their partners long faded away.
Some are overrun by the feet of others.
Never to go as far as they.
Slow saddened steps,
A leaden brush, painting the snow
Center stage, with the tale of the broken.
Played out for all to know.
Struggling steps
Raging, fighting, racing against fate.
Finally at the finish line,
to be met with a closed gate.
Looking, longing, and at the places that rejected them.
The places they were never meant to go.
The places where the steps are happy.
Leaping through the snow.
Huge strides and bounds!
Easily reaching above the rest
So fast! So far!
Soaring above the winter drifts,
That bury the bodies of those who fall.
Or footprints that struggle,
But still, they seek.
Climbing higher and higher
Until they reach the peak.
Starting as one pair.
Joined by another.
There are hard times
Through it all, they stay together.
New little footprints
They run around and play.
Growing larger and larger.
Until they go their separate ways.
And, some patches of snow.
Have no footprints at all.
No story. No journey.
No rise. No fall.
No risk, and no reward.
Like thinking a sentence
Without saying a word.
The perfect snow may be beautiful.
No struggle or sadness to be found.
It is far more lovely
Than the sad steps.
Or even the happy steps.
But, the blank snow.
Is just that,
Nothing lost, and nothing gained.
But in the end
Why does perfection matter.
When all the snow melts away.
You can fight. You can struggle. You might fail. You might succeed. But first, you have to start. Every corpse of Mt. Everest was an extremely motivated person. That corpse made it infinitely closer to reaching the top than the living person who never even tried.
Fear of failure might stop you from start things, but that’s just one possibility. The other is succeeding.
Marcus Chung