Here is the promise.
The foretelling of inches
tangy in the air under the clouds
and dusting the splinters of my deck.
In the hours before it falls in earnest
snow is nothing but a song half-written
and anxious to be what it becomes.
This is the heart of winter.
On the farm
the sex and death and blood and mud
are months away-
hidden under the snow –
-for now the chickens are
roosting in the dark of the afternoon
and the nanny goats are heavy
with the expectation of spring
and the furnace smoke is atomizing
off my skin under the bright spray of the shower faucet.
