Snow On

Batten down the hatches, folks, we have the winter uglies coming our way tonight...

 Snow On


Snow on a dead-skin-gray-cloud backdrop:
White freckles jumping ship to seek their color again
In warmer climes, anywhere but here,
While gravity grabs them to spite their denial.
“All things fall.” As if we need to be told.
And snowflakes, fat and heavy with the season’s weight,
Quietly descend (unless a whimsy wind stirs in their hearts)
And bring the seeds of winter from the cold but virile sky.

Snow on skeletal brown branches:
Bones of our bones with the flesh having changed,
Dermis and epidermis hardened and chilled;
Nails grown clear and long, creeping towards the ground;
Torso, loins, and legs boarded up as if in a coffin;
Blood turned to ice (or else seeping out of buried toes).
Trees know best what insulated mammals can only intuit:
All things freeze and slowly die from the inside out.

Snow on suffocating yet ever-green grass:
Billions of dollars’ worth of first-class lawn care—
Greenery groomed, pampered, spoiled like a prissy child—
Buried and mocked by a blanket of dusty white,
Its crystalline surface flawed by cracks from flurrying feet
And a snowman looming, a fat ephemeral god
With smile, top hat, carrot nose, and eerie button eyes,
Evoked and alive in this season shrouding all with death.

Snow on concrete (looks safe but watch your step!):
Blacktops, parking lots, driveways striving to keep their integrity,
The fury of specific heat waging war on snowflake ordnance:
Bombflakes striking without a boom, mushroom, fallout, or hell.
This battle has gone to the moderns, so high-tech designed,
But the ancient forces of white know persistence will win
And that “victory” here is but a holding of ground
For any and all things haughty in defiant hues.

Snow on the outside slowly drifting deep within:
In through the windows, in through the doors,
In through the clothing, the skin, and the eyes
As we watch ourselves, feel ourselves fall from the ashen sky.



Image credit: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Public Domain image, from Wikimedia Commons