Incantations to Snow
       

Cover, cover the streets, and block the moon.
            Hush the city noise
but brighten evening and slip a glowing
            soft focus on the lowliest
gas station sign. Yes, let it shine,
            as the little man in the booth
sleeps twitching and sitting up.

            Let it shine
where the dancers shake their asses
            to get a dollar loose,
and where someone gestures and shouts on a phone
            at a stop light
as if the world had stopped for his rage.

Cover, cover the lake, already frozen except
            where Canada geese gather
at a ragged edge of black water.
            And hiss into the river
that doesn't feel the limbs and logs it carries
            like butchered parts
or parts to be re-assembled in the Gulf of Mexico.

            Carry us in your flight,
your thoughtless descent. Do not mean loss
            or less. Go on
without the least consent, without a guess
            where each flake lands
or what shape each cold flower ever takes.

Cover, cover the way home especially well.
            Look like sugar, look like salt,
look like the layered paint on old window sills.
            Carry the dirt and grit up
from gutters to cars without a word, but leave
            the miles, the stares,
the trees clawing at an unmarked sky.

            Leave. Be like the clouds.
Be like the water. Stand for the thing
            that will and will not change
for reasons we will accept and still think bad—
            be like words, like vague words
belonging to the whiteout of endless work.

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Copyright © 2013 Lawrence Revard All rights reserved
from New Letters
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission