First Snowfall, Union Station, Washington, D.C., December 5, 2007

First Snow: Union Station

Eddie the Baseball Umpire disgorges
me from his Red Top Cab; I'm staring
down at pansies drowned in wet snow;

snap the vignette with cameraphone
despite sleet pinging my cheek.
I'm going home on wings of eagles!

Or just the mudslush MARC, ha ha.
Slurred footprints in snowgrass,
sugared holly, oak--holy smoke!

Cabs stream and surge, bus lurches,
grim commuters haul their lives;
giant wreaths hang like bagels

on facade. Whisky-breath, sackcloth bum
craves a buck. I refuse, smoke my cigar,
watch him lurch through the glass doors.

Then I bustle for MARC to the Big B:
bum's passed out on the marble floor,
Smoky-Bear-hatted cops bent over him.

Christopher T. George













Here are some cellphone photographs of the light snow covering we received yesterday in Washington, D.C., the first snow of the year in the Baltimore-Washingon metro region. My Samsung camera is out for the count... maybe needs a new memory card - I change batteries and it just seems dead, and i don't have a power cord (got the cam second hand). If anybody has any ideas, let me know. :(

All the pics are at Union Station after I was dropped off by the red cab driven by Eddie the Umpire, as noted in the poem. Eddie, an older black cabbie, surprised me by saying that when he doesn't drive a cab he is a baseball umpire.

First a shot of pansies in a flowerbox covered by the snow through shots of the front of the station and forecourt with taxis and buses and the Columbus monument in the distance, ending with a shot of one of the three large Christmas wreaths hung on the station facade before I ran for my train to Baltimore!