Snow

 

It was snowing and the landscape was beginning

to glow eerily with the blanket of whiteness. 

*

A winter sunset tinted the snow-covered plains lavender

and filled one’s soul with a strange calm.  

*

In the haze the snowfall created, my father saw a figure cross the farmyard,

moving from the house to the barn.  The figure paused a moment

and placed a mitten on his snow-covered tractor, the jag-toothed

mouth of the windshield bearded with snow.  

*

My father grabbed snow from the bank of the pond

and ground it into his eyes and into his mouth, swallowed it.

 

*

 

Snow: about an inch of large flaked fluff covering the black asphalt.

I had been driving late and I was tired of the highways slicked with

new snowfall. 

 

*

 

I jogged down the stairs and to the door near

 

where our car was parked out in the biting near-zero ice and snow.

 

*

 

I got outside and my breath hovered and then condensed

 

into a fine mist of snow.

 

*

 

When I got back to my room,

 

I watched the falling snow through the window.

 

*

 

I saw my father walk out among them, the beacon of his cigarette

 

shining, the large snowflakes crashing silently all around him.