Poem 138

Connected to the last poem in that when she did get away it was not to Paris but (initially) to a US winter and sent me a letter with her description of snow falling, prompting me who had never seen a snowflake to write myself into the scene …

( I like fragile killing crusts of sugar, nostalgic for the sound of a fly and the image of a snowball hitting a window as a crushed sun wetly soaking light … )

Snow

You said snow must be the gentlest weather
      there is
but how it drags at the feet like sleep
we shatter and unwrap each day from its clean film
making it wet and cold with our breath
       we scrape and sweep and probe
our way through fragile killing crusts of sugar
only to find ourselves under the wrong tree
in the wrong field
a mile the wrong way
                        from our house

it's winter so we want it to be something else
we want our cars to start
we're nostalgic for the sound
                                  of a fly
outside the children slaughter everything with their
footprints
             living you said in perpetual winter
everlasting summer in infinite
                                   autumn and spring
as we pass a window a handful of snow
splatters the glass
                     a crushed sun
    wetly soaking light
from the room

listen to the children their distant lungs
filling with the cold
                       and making the most ridiculous
                       noises out of it