It starts in the evening.
Graining our reflections
it arrives absent
chrysanthemums of joy.
Instead,
a snake of memory poisons us.
Waist-high paths mapped
with deer prints,
ewe trees gnawed to stub.
Standing tiptoe over
a bowling alley driveway.
Piles, carted by dump trucks
that lingered to May,
late spring birthing
sludge and oil
where dirty white
used to be.
No.
First snow this year
coats us in trepidation.
We wake to four inches.
At dawn, the window panes
and tree trunks,
hold on to the grey-light,
the ground over-exposed.
Black and white picture
developing into day.
