Indoor Tundra
       

The little that happens happens so slightly.
White and weightless,

but it does pile up. Every so often
a long slow spray of slush thrown out by a passing car
spills invisible glitter onto my shoulders

inside the house. I feel it, just barely, something
from long ago this same time of year,
something that ended just before dusk.

When I take a walk later on a day like this,
even if I am paired with my husband,
little will be spoken. We curl inside ourselves.

It is early December, snow-heavy, clouded.
The plows have been out
and they have honeycombed the slush.

A wrapped package under the arm,
and that sound, paper against a coat sleeve,
that's the sound this afternoon keeps making, close to me or far,

and then scatters the glitter again, invisibly.
As daylight capitulates and the telephone rings,
what is it that lifts a little, slightly disturbed,

and resettles slowly, unseen,
and as soundless as scrutiny? I have lost track
and can't say how slowly. Someone speaking in my ear

has become a conversation in a dining room gone dark
when someone at the side door rattles it and enters,
and a finger rubbed against the wall lifts up,

and the room is full of furniture.

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Copyright © 2015 Julie Hanson All rights reserved
from Meridian
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission