Winter Tangos

by Tamara Lee

There aren’t 100 Inuit words for snow.

I’m a little disappointed to learn this, if only because I rather like the poetic possibilities of that truth. While the bulk of the country is immersed in aput (Inuit for 'a blanket of snow'), we here on the wet coast have been experiencing if not hundreds, at least dozens of versions of rain, the subtleties of which can only be determined by a longstanding local.

Those of you socked-in by your latest slugfest with Winter probably can’t agree, but I feel a wee longing for your snow sometimes, when I look at our long term forecast and see this:

Wet flurries
Sleet
Showers
Periods of rain
Chance of showers
Rain
Drizzle
Rain mixed with snow
Snow mixed with rain

Perhaps there’s a poet on staff at Environment Canada; even the last two lines suggest an inverted couplet.

And something about the tone of this concrete poem sent me in search of a short film I happened on recently, by Hannu Neiminen, who’s crafted a beautiful melancholic blend of Finnish winter, dank pubs and tango in “Kammos Tango”.

Sometimes all there's left to do is watch winter dance.


(Images: top, polar tango; bottom, kammos tango still)