Monday, December 15, 2008

everyone will talk about this snow.
we will all write it so that we can own it, so that it
exists through us and not without us.

when we cry it will be snowflakes and out of
our mouths will dribble these drifts, piles.

our shoulders will carry feet of it,
our noses inches.

it will be our white freedom and we
will all look the same in our coats,
our faces peeking out enough to laugh
and nod,
sigh and nod,
and hurry,
and sit.

next may we will recall it,
the winter that settled when our backs were turned
the places we’d walk and how everything
looked so different,
how glad we were to be together,
to be alone.

we will hold this snow in stories
in photographs
in analogies that tie us together into single memories
into the humans this happened to,
and while we remember it out loud, we will think to ourselves
“how strange, how strange it is to live.”