February 4, 2014

another four to six inches

You've stopped leaving the house at the outset of a snowfall.

Stopped tilting your neck to the open sky, the cold, delicious flakes, the sweet mist

your breath makes under the street light. Your boots are in an upstairs closet,

next to the cache of paper towels and toilet paper, the extra extension cords.

When you go out to shovel the walk, what you see is not a radiant, fresh canvas 

but the source of that pinch in your left shoulder. You listen, numbly, to the forecast

predicting another pass-through of the stuff. Another four to six inches, apparently,

and you hope it's not enough to close the schools. But then you see the tree, bare

save its crush of white, and how the branches - tired, underfed - nevertheless

open to hold it all. This is patience, you think. This is love.