This year let’s search for curved branches

Photo by Unsplash.

Jan. 26, 2026

By Patricia Ranzoni

                                                                         Arm length. Rounded.

Shaped by the weight of what threatens to break. Because you

sent this card.

Because you sent this card, my snowfolk and I

will never see the same. No more straight out sticks

stuck in old ways, unable to reach round. No!

Because you sent this snowman card all sparkly and scarfy

I see something new. The possibility of bending arms encircling

in that ancient way humans dance turning our rounded arms

into lifted suns, our fingers sparking with what runs through us

when we touch.

Because you sent this card my snow people will still

sport buttons and eyes of stones I pry from the icy drive

and, you bet, smiles. And each carrot, oh, tipped high

and back, not straight out, no, nosier than that, the better

to see the cardinals lit in its twiggy hands overhead.

This year when it snows our sculpting kind of snow here

I promise I will stretch for this joy you sent. This new way

of dreaming. Of making and showing.

Wherever we are, through whatever tears, won’t you watch

in this spirit with me, and wave?

—Ranzoni was Bucksport’s poet laureate from 2014 to 2025. This poem was previously published in Still Mill, Poems, Stories & Songs of Making Paper In Bucksport, Maine 1930 to 2014. (North Country Press, Swan’s Island).

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