Member Poem

The snowfall was anticipated.
Forecast. Prescient. We waited
to see if it would stick, this time. It did.
Overnight it settled thick. A bed,
a blanket, ghostly white sheets
of the stuff. Too deep to drive: the streets
empty, sounds muffled. Still alive, but
quiet, now. I placed one foot
tentatively before the last, leaving
prints in linear casts. We breathed
in. It crunched like brittle bones
beneath my feet. Soon to be gone,
those smoothed, crisp sheets, corners tucked in tight
beneath blankets that same shade of white -
snow white. The colour of your hair. Passing
through, this brief north air. Fast,
in the end, to come and go. Transient.
That's the nature of snow: a solid presence,
then liquid, then air. We double back
(my footprints still the only tracks
on these stark paths, my fingers numb).
You wouldn't have wanted me to come.
Not at the end. Beneath the snow-
quilts it is dark and still. It's time
for me to go inside, and time
for you to go.