Snowmelt
The bare ground seems
at first an oversight, then
a growing scandal—
all that anonymity stripped away,
the brown earth caught
without its papers,
and the pines like secret agents
sifting every seditious
whisper of the wind.
Poems on the topic: snow
Poems on the topic “snow” on Poets.by.
Out
Each time I go out,
I interrupt something: a hawk’s meal,
a groundhog’s courtship.
I make an offering
of my gray hair—a fine
nesting material—
toss the cuttings out
onto the snow. The warm wind
blows them right back.
Slush
Slush: the mellifluous sound
the tires make
just before they start spinning.
Soft snow banks
are treacherous as Loreleis,
pulling the unwary driver in.
I steer gingerly with windows down,
listening to the welcome hiss
of leaves and mud.
Vessels
The perfect pits
in the snow around
the lowbush blueberry stems
awaken in me
the old urge to collect—a museum
of pots and bronzes,
and in the plaza,
a fountain that accommodates
every coin-sized absence…
Winter gardener
I was land-hungry in my youth.
In the summer I turned soil
and in winter hoped for snow—
a Platonic kind of field,
rich in solitude as any desert
and as free of weeds,
the leafless rose in the yard
alone with its snarl
of barbed canes.
Downsizing
Day by day
the shadows are dwindling,
assuming more realistic shapes,
like the ambitions of a man
in middle age.
The snow hardens underfoot.
I hear the first
mourning dove call of the year:
desire in a minor key.
March
A four-pronged twig tumbled by wind
has left the oddest tracks
in the snow, no two alike.
The fox, by contrast,
has walked more than a mile
in her own, earlier footprints,
leaving a single set
of blurred tracks with toes
pointing in both directions.
Winterkill
When it died, the porcupine
leaked its fluids onto the snow
like a junker car.
I turn it over
with a stick: no sign
of a wound.
Startled up from the forest floor,
sixteen doves go whistling
into the snow squall.
Burning the tissues
In a snow-bound ring of stones,
I am burning all the tissues
from my recent cold.
The sun beats down. Fallen twigs
and leaves are melting themselves
into form-fitting graves.
A flat wing of ash floats up
and hangs in the air
like a famous last word.
Old snow
Melting snow reveals old secrets.
Two spots of blood
have reemerged in the yard.
Wrinkles appear—
long, dark faultlines
from differential settling.
I know you,
I mutter to myself.
We’ve been here before.
Thaw
Having melted the snow above it,
a black stone glistens
in its pit.
All thaws seem abrupt.
Lichens slicked with meltwater
glow a lurid green.
I’m feverish—might I, too,
burn a hole
clear through to spring?
Snow follies
Snow doesn’t stop falling
when it hits the ground;
it just slows down for a while.
It’s like that talk-show host
who ridiculed the idea
of a day-time moon—
how I relished his show’s
slow collapse, despite
its glut of glitterati.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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