“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.