A poem Mary Glaspole
‘Outside Le Grand café
the greying snowman suffers in the sun.
That baseball cap is poor protection,
spots of mud and cappuccino stain his once pristine overcoat…’
My poem Once a Snowman was inspired by the deep snow we had in the UK in November. I love snow but I really hate snowmen who stick around for weeks after the rest of the snow has gone. Compacted snow takes ages to melt. On literal level that is what the poem is about but there are deeper meanings too.
‘The greying snowman suffers in the sun.’ You often find abandoned snowmen outside shops and so I thought this image could also be about a homeless person sleeping in a shop doorway, having coffee spilt on him and dogs trying to pee. He is getting old and turning grey. Drug addicts and other hungry people are stealing his stuff i.e. his pipe and his nose. During the recession he could even be sleeping outside the place where he used to work.
When the snowman was built the shop owners gave him a ‘well fed body.’ When times were good he had enough to eat, but now he is skinny and untidy. He smiled, now his smile is drooping as he is dying.
The poem is also about relationship breakdown. The shop owners used to call him ‘Snow King’, now nobody bothers with him; this demonstrates how unemployment can lead to couples splitting.
To read the full version of this poem follow the link
http://authspot.com/poetry/once-a-snowman/
