(for Vincent and Gareth)

We took the whiteness, the coldness,
And we made a man:
A true Goliath.

We rolled small rounds of fluffiness
Into rough footballs,
Cauliflower hearts.

We soon smiled above ostrich eggs;
We pushed and patted,
Gathering lather.

On a flooring of magic foam,
We made a tower
Of dinosaur eggs.

Packing and shaping the three globes,
Manning the coldness,
We bodied whiteness.

As the slow sky gathered darkness,
We sculptured two arms:
The god was headless.

We took the whiteness, the coldness,
And we made a head:
A prize, white pumpkin.

A surgeon of snow, Eskimo,
I placed on the head:
Winter genesis.

We faced it with Christmas walnuts;
And filling a bowl,
We made it a hat.

We buttoned its belly with coal.
It looked down on us:
A graven image.

We left the whiteness, the coldness,
The falling darkness,
And entered the house.

My children, tired labourers,
Soon settled in bed:
Proud of their giant.

Midnight, I looked through the window,
At a strange garden:
A ghostly landscape.

My eyes fixed on a colossus,
A monster of snow —
Ice-Age Frankenstein:
Coming whiteness; coming coldness.

 Peter Thabit Jones © 2016

Published in VISITORS by Peter Thabit Jones, 1986