Where is the Snow?

December 23, 2025
Salt Lake City, Utah

Current temperature
52 degrees
Fahrenheit.

Springtime buds
betray the confused
trees that should be
slumbering in
their winter rest.

Forecast high
of sixty-two
degrees
Fahrenheit.

Sixty-five
percent
chance
of rain
on
Christmas Day.

Where
is the
snow?

What Kind of Poem Is This?

This poem comes from establishing daily writing habits. When I write regularly, I stop waiting for something important to happen and start paying attention to what is already there. The weather. The date. A season behaving strangely. The question shifts from Is this worth writing about? to what happens if I write it down anyway?

Documentary Poem

I think of this as a documentary poem because I am recording what is happening without explaining it. The dates, temperatures, and forecasts are not symbolic for me. They are facts. I list what is true and let it stand on its own.

Found Poem

I pulled this poem from a weather app. The language was already broken into short lines and fragments, and I kept that structure. I did not heighten or rewrite the information. I simply moved it into the space of a poem and let the strangeness speak for itself.

Lyric Free Verse

I chose lyric free verse because I wanted to stay with a single moment of awareness. There is no story to tell here and no argument to make. Being direct felt like the most honest choice.

Occasional Poem

This is also an occasional poem because it belongs to a specific day. December 23. Christmas approaching. Rain instead of snow. The poem depends on that timing. Written on another day, it would not be the same poem.

Commentary, or What Is Not Said

This could be read as commentary about climate, but that was not my aim. I was writing about the day in front of me. Any larger meaning may live in what I did not say, in the gap between the facts and the final question.

In Short

I was not trying to explain or persuade. I was paying attention. Sometimes writing about the moment is enough.