They drop from salt shaker clouds,
the last ingredient of a landscape. Invisible
in the darkness until they reach the swathes
of light cast by the tall lamps, above
an empty parking lot. If they made noise,
they would sound like the cacophony
of a symphony tuning their instruments.
Snow covered bats race between flakes
like the blind doves of winter. The world
is more imposing in silence. Tonight
it demands only that I listen. Each footstep,
with its rubbery compression, may as well
be an inning of baseball in a light bulb factory.
I stop walking, to watch each flake,
born into solitude, high above the Earth,
until it joins the cities of snow. It’s easy
to see how easy our lives fall into metaphors.
I catch a flake in my mouth and let it die
with its identity, like a commuter, consumed
by a front end collision, en route to the cubicle
Ideas are given form with the Rorschach
of my foggy breath, Comic book bubbles appear
when I have no words to fill them. I offer
the snow my footsteps instead, my boots
leave their prints across a virgin field.
The symmetric curves appear in the snow,
like a breast and a scream that break
from the white noise of forbidden cable.