Snowfall

As dry as sand, 

wrung out and shrunken from the cold,

loose and shivering like dead hemlock needles in a parched winter wind, 

puddling and sifting in the wake of footsteps.

Heavy and soft like goose down 

from the plushest of pillows, 

wet-falling, slow-drifting, 

hanging in the air like the globes of lanterns.

Wispy as ghosts in the tree-creaking wind, 

buffeted into the powdery silhouettes of feathery-skirted dancers, 

pirouetting on the crests of hills 

where the gusts sweep up the flakes 

with hungry, broom-bristled mouths. 

Smooth as a well frosted cake, 

a spoonful of yogurt, 

the creamy color of vanilla. 

Humps as even as a dolphin’s wet back, 

weighing the boughs down into a sea of stiff, white immobility. 

Heaps piled so high that the wind could not lift them, 

even if it blew as fast as the Earth turned.

Slush under boot, 

wet like clingy puddles, 

seeped in mud and rock and dirt to a steeped-tea brown. 

Footprints of it on warm stone tile, footprints by the hearth, 

melting to pools, 

fading in the roar of the fire.

Dense, small flakes, 

like droplets, near to hail. 

Little white marbles of it, 

smaller than the tip of an eraser, 

clustering together and sticking on every flat surface

like crumbled styrofoam.

Tiny and stinging 

like the pinpricks of needles against warm cheeks, 

swirling in the eyes and making them water.

Dark snow against a starling sky,

invisible beneath a cloud-shrouded moon. 

The snow nobody saw fall, 

elusive as an owl, calling,

through a half-waking dream.

Striking snow, 

bright and blinding, 

like the zippp of reflectors through the car windows at night,

like the shining streak of a comet’s trail, 

full to bursting with the gleam of headlights, 

path broken only by the swipe of the wipers across the windshield.

Loud snow, 

crisp and crackling 

like the dusting of cane sugar over the crust of a pie. 

The gentle step atop it, testing the sun-hardened surface,

a tentative lean onto the foot, 

a split second of floating on a paper-thin blanket of crystal-hard snow– 

then a CRACK, and it snaps,

like a twig in heavy frost 

and the boot sinks into the petals of soft flakes below.

Snow blue as mountain lakes under a hollow, cavernous sky. 

Powder blue, like sidewalk chalk crushed underfoot, 

twilight blue, like the edges of the opposite horizon in the last glow of sunset. 

Bright blue against trees so dark in shadow

that they melt into the inky night behind them.

Still like a lake on a dewy, misted morning, 

still like a mirror laid under a cloudless sky, 

still as only snow can be, 

when the wind stops 

and all the flakes have fallen 

and all that remains is the gray, gray sky

and the gray, gray snow.