POEM OF THE WEEK: In Snow

In Snow

When my southern sister said that
she missed the silence of snow,
I was reminded of the mailman on break,
his truck banked against the snow,
sunlight streaming through the windshield,
all white against white against white,
his eyes closed until someone is upon him
while the letters piled in the back
quietly wait to be delivered.

And then too, I hear the few birds flying about,
their sounds tiny and squeezed into tight, cold air,
barely room for a water molecule,
dropping songs with brittle beak,
like broken crystals onto crusty white ground.

I am also fond of the peculiar and satisfying crunch of deeply frozen snow, that makes as much noise on my toes as it does in my ear, this being a mystery of infinite shapes grinding against each other, my body a tuning fork, the snow world its globe.