The Snow That Never Stopped
The snow never stopped.
Flake after flake
Their spiked points
Clawing the air
Divided the space
Into vertical columns
Of emptiness.
The surreal landscape
Grew higher
Into muffled outline
Of former objects.
Sometimes the snowflakes
Were icy pinpoints.
Sometimes hairy disks
Speeding straight down.
Sometimes huge clumps
Of collided partners
Held appendages
While slowest of all
Declining
To their brethren below
Who waited with up-stretched
Icy arms and fingers.
We became a local phenomenon.
The hometown forecaster smiled and gestured.
The news section showed great walls of white
Along our road.
The snow kept falling.
We had to cut shelves
At shoulder height
To throw the bottom snow upon.
March came and went.
We switched to tunnels
And parked the cars a half mile away.
The snow was heavy
Like spring snow should
And my back ached
From the hourly struggles.
We needed the glow of the TV
In the rooms with the outdoor light blocked
By the exterior drifts.
The weatherman’s brow was furrowed
But his gestures were still grand.
By late April
We were unprecedented in the lower 48.
I was interviewed
By CNN.
We got our deep canyons back
As the warm air
Brought down the tops.
The snow was only normal size flakes,
But the snow kept falling.
By May the weathermen were slumping
And shell-shocked tones
Were their only sign of animation.
The flakes were tiny dots by day
And heavy cousins of sleet by night.
By late May
The retreating melt
Revealed
Our house was the obvious epicenter.
In June the researchers and tourists
Started to arrive.
One side of the front yard had equipment.
The other had family units
Building snowmen,
Making Angels
And staging snow fights
For the ever-present video cams.
On the summer solstice
We were declared
A commercial flight hazard,
But the little planes
And choppers loved to zoom
Into and above the permanent
Gray cloud.
By July
The local forecaster
Had a permanent marker over our house
Upon his map.
The local fair
Came and got a dump-truck load
For weird “real” sno cones.
Here I sit in August
In the motel where we live now
Watching the scientists on NPR
Spouting big words
About jet-stream and global warming
That boil down to
They don’t know.
I peel my sticky butt
Of the cheap chair vinyl
And
I go over to the door
With all its metal security appointments
Go outside to the narrow patio
And gaze across the valley
At the gray cloud,
The white spot,
And wonder
When will it ever stop?
November?
albi
Copyright, 2003