Yesterday, the snow made the world unsafe.
It’s not a friend to gravity or air.
Mixed with ice and wind it will cut and strafe
Until eyes bind and fields go bald and bare.
Today I throw my knees through knee deep drifts
And float my way down to Ellarson pond.
The ice has frozen deep — all buckled rifts.
Such cold can rend the molecular bond.
The spruce limbs sag and the long grasses break
And drop in multiples of N’s and M’s.
Only cattails bend with unbroken stems.
I recall Nemerov on the snowflake —
How can we know no two flakes are the same?
Being here, I can’t even know our name.
