snow – orphan poems

124. Come on in this house

Snow is falling

right out of the sky.

A red car flipped

off the interstate

on black ice.

She’s totaled.

That snow keeps falling

and falling,

softening lifespans.

Come on in this house.

122. Early Blizzard

Raked across the eastern sky,

five traveling mallards

are launched by sunrise.

To the west, dark

mountains ignore the last star

fading. Wildfire’s smoke points

north, suggesting a chinook

that refuses to arrive when

summoned. I whisper myself

awake. Flakes have stacked

up, curled into themselves,

sculpting the first

wave of winter.

85. cold

.

i remember cold

so brittle snow squeaks beneath

my restless feet. i remember

.

cold so polished, breath

skates through barely touching

the body starved for

.

air. i remember cold

so clean the world’s slow heartbeat

is visible, pulse

.

bumping lightly against

the thinnest sun. in my northern

home, a cold

.

so pure the very

air freezes, light particles

dancing near the floor of

space.

.

66. snow thunderstorm

Like the ragged end

of a goose shot, breath feathers

marking impact’s explosion,

snowflakes swirl down off sky’s

collision with the ground floor air

we breathe. Thunder rumbles, muffled

by the crowded crystals, gentling

through spaces

empty yesterday.