I started today by holding snow, or what was more of an

 

Excuse for snow, the delicate lurking on all ragged edges

More muck than beauty, stubborn on the pine ends of

Scarlet oaks, snow globes grazing the piled pebble walk

A snowed-in Saturday has lost its allure, as in no longer

Shall I plan a poetry day, a cleaning day, or a laundry day

 

As in, letting go is a journey I have just begun, uncharted

As in now, my skin is an excuse for the history my mother

Carried inside her knuckles, as in the knuckles that were

Alien towns with lanes and alleys that held grief, as in the

Grief that let itself into her knitting, like a blistered wound

Braiding one blanket after another, as if hoarding, names

 

Of those gone, all the serpents she carried but her tongue

Did not say, she now weaves baubles into moon earrings

Today when I let the snow fall through my fingers into the

Warmth of the ground below, only after it left a tiny wet

Droplet on my fingertips, in that lingering moment I held

My mother’s hands in mine, telling me to let the river flow

 

Through the steeple edges of my body, brackish waters

Inside, as in she always stitched blankets into an endless

Patch of eternity, as in she harvested the sun and moon

Into her stitched landscapes, today in holding snow and its

Colorless powder, I emptied my eyes into my palms, letting

An outburst that was waiting to happen, flakes of my skin

 

Merging with the tactile river I never knew existed in me

Unmet cacophonies now swishing into unexpected snow

As in the icicles settle inside fractured spaces of my bones

Their hollow calcium shells hold poems that erase the past

Outside the snow mower is shearing away at the concrete

Inside I aspire to strangle the chuckle behind my vocal cord