Flakes as Big as Pancakes
Mar 27 2010


Sloppy wet snowflakes
drizzle down
from a monochrome sky,
the drab grey
of unpainted canvas,
absorbing light.

The snow barely accumulates;
so paved surfaces glisten,
the dead lawn
wears a thin white shroud.
The thermometer hovers
on the cusp of zero
in a quantum state of flux,
either freeze or thaw or both —
just as subatomic particles
can be here and there at once.

The flakes are as big as pancakes
not lacy, but clumped,
the fine filigree of their crystal lattice
smudged.
They drift, windless, to earth
like little parachutes,
lightly touching down.
Swallowed-up
in the murky puddle where the culvert froze.
Or on the grass, in a thin white layer,
that looks like vanilla icing
whipped-up
with too much sugar and air.

The month of March
slips between winter and spring
and back again.
And sometimes almost summer
when sun burns through the cloud.
I’ve put away the shovel,
because March snow takes care of itself.
Much like October —
no grass to cut, no shovelling,
a break from daily chores.

Rubber boot weather,
with winter hat, and gloves.
I splash through puddles,
leave sharply etched tracks
in stiff translucent slush.
And though I’ve grown accustomed
to the deep-freeze of winter,
the damp chill
has an even bitter cut.
As if the sun, too
had taken a break this month.