Increments of Snow
1
The moon full and at its perigee
pours chalky light on all surfaces,
preternatural illumination.
Acute ears hear mice
fidgeting under snow in the woods.
We can't hear them,
almost at our feet, deep snow—
It's difficult to advance, never
the proper shoes, the right clothing.
Close up of an owl’s head, birch-colored wings.
How many ways can a story come to grief
before its characters are
developed, before they walk on snow
wearing shoes that
reapportion the weight of their bodies?
When light is ashen around me,
why do I feel less alone?
2
A child can't be baptized after death.
Everything's lost on a stillborn child,
voices, coal seams, moonlight
filling a cradle or a cowrie shell.
3
You’ve lost your mittens, you naughty kittens
an arc of lamplight, a book unclosed, a light snow
seen from an upper window, large flakes
of such transience
they ignite in light, freeze
to a glaring road ice,
become droplets
on a Paschal lily or lilac sprig that blooms in history.
One universe empties into another, teardrops,
a blood-drop on a slide.
What do I want to end with—
4
A snow pack, a reservoir,
an animal bleeds out into fresh snow;
a deer stands, turns to go,
the air white with owl feathers.
5
A henhouse warmed by light bulbs in cubbyholes.
Yard branches scrape the house
in which we listen.
Thrown out with the tea leaves
and food scraps is the news,
on the advice of counsel they won’t call this a war.
In the basement and in shaken trees, time accrues:
turnips and apples in storm cellars,
wind so loud I fear for the hours.
Sentience in the air after a storm.
6
Former snows may be investigated,
preserved in cylinders of prehistoric ice
while the trees go along as if there were nothing
to be done by any of them, and there isn't.
7
A sketch appears in a notebook, penciled hills, fields.
A depicted world becomes your vision,
your meditation, an exercise
in what seems to be your own experience.
8
Does a clouded thought resemble a snow drift,
an abiding overcast,
an incessant blackbird?
Children abandoned in the forest
feed birds with crumbs from their jacket pockets.
Certain kinds of attention
as if there were no then, no now,
slips of whiteness flurried by movement,
just a moment with someone there.
