Elements - Chapter 2 - Storm, Part 1

4 Poems

In Brooklyn, the snow doesn't fall so much as negotiate its descent,
bartering with gravity, wind, and the city's upward thrust.
It accumulates like unspoken words between generations,
a white weight on the shoulders of brownstones and memory.

My father, a man who wore his blackness like a uniform,
once told me that snow made everyone equal, at least for a day.
I watch from the window as it transforms the neighborhood,
obscuring the lines between sidewalk and street,
between the houses of those who shovel their own walks
and those who pay others to do it.

The blizzard speaks in dialects of wind and ice,
a language as complex as the history it blankets.
It whispers of Langston's dreams deferred,
now crystallized and falling from the sky,
of Baldwin's fire, next time, doused but not extinguished.

Outside, children make angels in the snow,
their small bodies creating negative space
in the whiteness, as if to say: We were here,
we existed in this moment, in this place.
I think of how my ancestors must have felt,
seeing snow for the first time after the middle passage,
their dark skin a stark contrast against the pale landscape,
unable to blend in, to disappear, even if they wanted to.

The city grows quiet under its new coat,
muffled like the conversations at family reunions,
where we dance around topics of race and class,
of who made it out and who's still struggling.
In this silence, I can almost hear the creaking of branches
in the old elm outside, bearing up under the weight
like the spines of those who marched across bridges in Selma.

As night falls, the snow glows with an inner light,
reflecting the city's restless energy back to itself.
I step outside, leaving footprints that will be erased by morning,
temporary as triumph, enduring as struggle.
In the distance, a plow scrapes the street raw,
revealing the blacktop beneath, a reminder
that beneath every whitewash lies a darker truth.

I catch a snowflake on my tongue, taste its brief life,
its journey from cloud to earth, from symbol to reality.
In its intricate, unique design, I see a reflection
of my own complex heritage, a fusion of cultures and histories,
beautiful in its singularity, part of a greater whole.

As the blizzard rages on, I stand at the intersection
of past and future, of individual and community,
watching the city I love transform and persist,
much like the people who call it home.
In this swirling white, we are all writing our stories,
leaving our marks, however ephemeral, on the urban snowscape,
our presence an indelible print on the page of history.

This poem draws inspiration from Gregory Pardlo's exploration of race, family, and urban life, often through the lens of personal experience. It uses the metaphor of a blizzard to examine themes of identity, history, and the complexities of life in a diverse city.