A Patch of Old Snow
memory
lyric poem
melancholic
There’s a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten — If I ever read it.
A Patch of Old Snow - meaning Summary
Memory as Weathered Scrap
The speaker observes a small remnant of snow and imagines it as a blown-in scrap of paper, stained and speckled like old print. That image prompts a meditation on forgotten news and the slipperiness of memory: the remembered event is reduced to an indistinct, dirty speck, perhaps never read at all. The poem uses a quiet, domestic observation to suggest how time and weather erase specifics, leaving only vague traces that resemble but fail to recover past significance.
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