Shovelling Snow

Twilight has set out,

Laying frigidity from the east;

Over the pine tops;

Soldiered, looming trees,

Forever emerald. Though

Night wraps up colour

In halved secrets-

All but white,

White.

See, the wind too exhales in white.

And breathes it on the windows,

Down buttoned, winter coats;

Carried,

Scattered,

Like the seed of eldered dandelion. 

It kisses the face

That warms it to a sting,

Planting no life.

Here silence and the cold are a single thing.

I yield a praying, whitened sigh

While through the air they constrict the chest.

The valley, hallowed out of sound

In quiet, wintered death

Seems permanent below with a graveyard peace

While the things of summer have their rest. 

jordan dejonge