Winter

Silently it enters

a chill, a flake.

Lacy polka-dots appear in the sky,

gently they swirl, transform the outdoors

into a child’s play-toy

Snowmen, sledding, snow forts

for a while.

Today

frozen into this implacable mass

it does not play or tease.

It glares sternly and bites with Cold’s harsh teeth.

Ice over snow over ice

this white-hard rock

brings you down and pens you in.

Piles of snow in the driveway

grow faster than last year’s garden.

We frost-encrusted Iowans will not claim

to savor this white beauty (much)

but we wait for it always to come

and we wait for it always to leave

and we seek that thing in ourselves

that will outlast it

once again.

©2010 Donna Jo Wallace.