The Color Of Snow

Isn’t snow always
remarkable? Although
it’s not snow
charming us, maybe,
as much as its 
volume, how
it falls so silently 
when there’s no
wind to push it. 
Then again it’s 
so difficult to manage
at times, sticking around,
adhering to ground and 
pavement, to our vision
and never mind our freedom
to move; how about
the child from my hometown
who fell into a drift
outside his front door and
wasn’t found until spring?
Snow did that, drew him
into its maw and 
killed him. How missed
he was, right there on his own
land, his parents’ death-ache
palpable all over town
that winter when all you could see
everywhere was —
ah, clarity — White.
It’s silly to fear the snow
just for its color,
they tell me, but when considering
my own history, I have to speak up:
try to understand, I don’t fear the snow
for its color as much as I’ve learned
to fear the color itself and how it 
warps the picture outside my front door
without a word — so silent,
so heavily insistent, so 
relentless.