Molly's Igloo

After three days and rising of Easter snow,
nothing else for it but to build an igloo.

We salvaged a wheelbarrow from the shed, shovels– 
a spider’s citadel spun in each handle.

Settling into the routine: load, trundle, empty, pat– 
two ice-heaps grew, wide as mammoths.

Bolstering an archway with palmfuls of snow,
a frosted rainbow soon united both sides.

Where we exhausted the white, tarnished grass
told of the put-aside world waiting to thaw.

First skirmish with rain, we ducked beneath
the snow-rim, watching the clouds exhale,

never doubting the roof would hold.
Backs against breezeblock, the house obscured,

we pretended the igloo was complete, talked fur rugs,
inflatable armchairs, sleeping bags.

When more rain came we didn’t mention
the cracks spreading, the hole gouged 

setting a trap for the moon.
A cluster of stars.

By next morning the roof had collapsed,
the wept arc dissolved into concrete.

It must have rained all night.
Riddled with mud, the mammoths held for weeks,

diminishing; finally gone. Yet sometimes
washing the dishes, peering out into the gloom,

I still follow you into the igloo – you never age –
crawl through back-scraping tunnel until we must be

far beyond the garden’s border; further,
overlapping handprints scored into snow-walls

like undiscovered cave drawings.
Sounds from the faraway house fading,

the igloo expanding about us,
building itself from new snowdrift.

Grinning in your fox-eared knitted hat,
the turning ghost of your breath amber

in the small flare of my match – 
a single candle at a derelict altar.

Published in Stand