Scant light flirts withclarity in bland winter sky. Nakedtrees huddle loyally in frosty breeze.Touch evades, dormant kisses.Succumbing, you hole up with Neruda,form a pact with night’s descending net, inventanother version of shacking up,elope with a shadow. Originally published in a different form, and as “Daylight Savings Ends”, in Verse-Virtual (2015).

Snow used to get us out,make us communal,offering respite fromschool, indoors.Traces now languishon the lawn, in woods.Sleds can’t slide on that!No children playing.But I know the texture of snow—wet, powdery, crystalline,dry on my face, stingingfingers, dripping in palmsmolding it into balls tossedagainst a pine, hit or miss.I miss the proximity of snow,the abundant silence it …