Snow in Our Town

'Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?'

- Job 38:22

How all that bright weight

came from clouds

astonished us that morning:

sky and earth joined

without horizon, full

as our new silence,

long streets vanished and the V's

of trees heavy, everything planted deeper

and mounded white.

When it's years since more than a skiff,

the schools don't open. Now

we remember the crush of footfall,

a softening in every angle,

the scrape of a shovel and how voices carry

metallic through the block.

Our visible breathing commingles

then melts upward toward plump roofs.

We walk past teens unabashed

making angels, grown men showing children

how to start snowballs rolling

into growing white planets

that will circle each yard.