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 could pretend for a moment
we'd traveled there,
escaped this harsh season,
when what God really wanted,
was to hold us frozen, inside.
