Apiary Magazine and Grasslimb Journal: “Between Blizzards”

“Between Blizzards” was originally published in Apiary (September 2010) and Grasslimb (v.12, n.1, print-only).

Between Blizzards

Snow clouds piled again
and loomed in the sky
like silos packing
all the dark weight
of a late wet harvest.

The last planes out at sundown
were silver sleds
with chrome-dipped wings
snapping through life strings
tethered to trees–
winter’s glint-shafts of thinning heat.

Shops closed early,
and folks still bent for home
scurried with narrow gaits over icy trails
like high-rise workers on lattices of steel.

Then the sky paused and took
its last shallow breath,
exhaling a prelude of aimless snow.

And we knew this was it:
the final signal to seal ourselves in
and brace for the lashings
of night’s whipping winds
sweeping beneath street lights,
in that deceiving, moth-soft glow,
relentless rough-cut shavings
tearing through every space
moaning and drifting
in gables and yards
into corners and doorways,
all the depths of night’s folds⁠—
as the edges crept in closer
from where they were before.