Much could be made of winter’s first real flurry
(the way it breaks a bleakness up, disturbs
a desolation lately caked on curbs
and evening walkers, streetlights, leafless trees —
that morning whiteness breathes a baptized fury),
but wonderland dissolves in after-slush:
the goo-gray soggy puddle trudge, the freeze
of sidewalk spots at random and the rush
of rooftop avalanches lurching off.
The whole effect is like the dawning weight
you feel, and fight against, when falling out
of dreams that let you high-jump clouds and skate
through sky —
reality returns to flout
your snow-blind fantasy, to bind and scoff.
(Still, there’s this hope: the Lord sends other snows
till spring, the most real season, redeem our winter doze.)