Heads Up poetry column: First Snow
FIRST SNOW
After the long red warning of maples
it is still a surpise attack, the hordes
sweeping in at night, and at dawn
riding the shadows
as we lie in the shelter of blankets,
in the summer blood of our loving,
and feel the old terror of time
freezing the land.
The outer walls are abandoned,
the same every year, the flowers
frozen; we dig in behind the storm windows,
remembering noon in the hazy
shimmer of cornfields,
remembering noon with aspens
and faraway bells—
but each year the losses: the old ones,
limping off to their dim consummation,
tell us fear is a small brown mouse
come in from the cold to chew
at the belly nerves,
and it touches us now, the truth
of the whole gray assault: it is war
to the ultimate cold
as we lie in the shelter of blankets,
in the summer blood of our loving,
and feel the old terror of time
freezing the land.
(New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996)