Ad Infinitum

I told myself I wouldn't write about snow this time, that I was done with it.  But when I sat down to work on a blog post, this is what came out.  When I was in fifth grade, we had so much snow we were out of school for most of February. I remember that, the same way fifty years from now today's kids will remember this defining year.  And so it goes . . .

In Twenty-fifteen

We lived at sea level

and yet,

hills that began

calendar-page white,

climbed the skies around us

at first untouched,

but for the scampering,

a rabbit maybe, a squirrel,

and clearly a deer

sloughing a path,

its row of stutter steps

forging a diagonal,

waist-deep behind the shed.

Once the wind died,

we sucked in our breath and shoveled,

not bothered by the hoar frost

paining our lungs,

unaware

that again

and again,

the skies would howl

with blow and tear,

that our frozen roof

would pop,

gunshot sounds

leaving us awake and trapped,

amid our worst imaginings.

That later,

mounds would tower

at the end of the driveway,

line the half-wide streets,

or that bobcats and backhoes

would lift snow

into deep-welled trucks,

shape mountains

on the beach lot,

in front of a slurry sea.

In Switzerland they have the Alps,

Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Dom,

and if we stood around

the curve in the road

and held our hands like picture frames,
we could pretend for a moment

we'd traveled there,

escaped this harsh season,

when what God really wanted,  

was to hold us frozen, inside.