I know you’ve heard love is patient. You’ve probably heard all those other descriptions like

• love is kind
• love is blind
• love is true
• love is blue

But have you ever heard that love is snow?

One day, as I sat in my college dormitory room in Manhattan, Kansas…I looked out the window and saw feathery, floating flakes of snow. It had just begun to snow an early Autumn snow, so I knew it wouldn’t last…or maybe wouldn’t even stick around at all.

As I did just about everyday I flipped open my nifty spiral notebook, grabbed my trusty Bic pen and began to write. It was a love song I never wrote the music for, but to this day I can hear the music in my head when I read the words.

A lot of my words and lyrics back then were vague…filled with open-ended implications. I don’t think I did it on purpose all the time, but many times I did. This was one of those…

Love Is Snow

I’m not borrowing the phrases
That you’ve heard so many times.
I’m just putting down my feelings,
And if by chance it rhymes”
It rhymes for you.
For the misbegotten melodies
That ring from birds an bells
Could sing not of the beauty
That my spy, the wind, foretells.
It tells of you.
Let me be sand
So that you might walk on me.
Let me be air
So that you might breathe me in.
Let me be light
So that you might look at me.
Let me be the battle that you fight and win.
I’m not borrowing the phrases
That you’ve heard so long and know.
I’m just putting down my feelings
Like the clouds put down the snow.

Copyright © Tony Funderburk 1974
September 25

In Faith, Hope, and Love”