After the Meeting
A Poem for a Snowy Day
In honor of the snowstorm that’s slowly winding down outside my window, a chatty, musing poem inspired by the memory of a public meeting in the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School1 cafeteria that went very late (not so uncommon) on a very snowy night that, thankfully, preceded a snow day.
Oh, Frank, Karen really let me have it.
“Why didn’t you wait inside?”
Well, she had a point:
it was late, and it was snowing hard.
“Did you really ask some old guy
if he wanted to say something,
even though it was 11:30?”
Billy must have been watching on TV
and called to tell her about that.
She doesn’t know that Arthur
comes to every meeting
since his wife died, and that
he always says something
during public comment.
But the meeting really hadgone on. I kept nodding and
thanking people for coming out
in the storm, but they all seemed
to be saying the same things.
When the wind picked up—
you could really hear it—
I couldn’t stop looking
out the windows
at the back of the room:
the snow was falling upwards
and sideways. Beautiful.
I know.
I could have easily waited inside;
the custodians were still there
making the cafeteria into a cafeteria again.
One of them I knew from when
he played baseball with Billy.
But it was just like that night
that you and I walked home
from that party. We’d said no
to all the offers to give us a lift--
“It’s not more than a mile.”
It was after midnight, and
we didn’t have any kids yet
and the snow was getting
thicker by the minute.
Everything was so quiet.
Except for us. We were walking
arm-in-arm trying not to slip and fall,
and we couldn’t stop giggling.
Our Karen is always there for me,
always sensible. I think
I’ve never told her that story.
1
Reworked screen shot of a Harvard Crimson photo from February 7, 2023, accompanying an article called “Harvard Faculty and Cambridge Students Speak Out Against AP African American Studies Ban.” https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/3/22/cambridge-public-committee-ap-african-american-studies/
I dig it!