Snow Nails

Gayle Broadbent-Ferris

January 2, 2004

www.skyglass.com

 

©2004 Gayle Broadbent-Ferris

   When you go out walking on a winter day, your breath steaming thickly, the pom-pom hat Grandma knitted for you bobbing on your head, your feet leaving long blue pits behind you—it is now that you may find a snow nail.

    I remember well when I found my first one, in sixth grade, walking home from the bus stop after school, walking through the snow-filled black scratched sleeping orchard, a long way, and the nails look thin and bluish, like the shadow of a twig on the snow, a shadow cast by the weak winter sun, but where is the matching branch above?

    There is no matching branch above, and that’s how you found it, a loose snow nail, lying there, and gathered it up into frozen hands.

    Evidently the snow needs lots of nails here in Utah, to remain attached, because the winter earth is so hard and cold and unwilling: you can see that.

But they’re hard to find, rare. You must be diligent.

I have found seven in my life.

 

 

                      THE END