Falling snow the silk
screen around me, a padded
room to scream in,
I perch porch-sheltered
upon a bucket of rock salt.
Wind-buoyed branches incite
secondary showers. Voices
down the lane are near
to me, near as my dreams
are to the surface these nights
Naomi soaks a stain
of honeydew through the swaddle.
I roll away from lamplight.
Away from Lili rinsing.
Mom lays eyes upon the light-brown
owl whose hoots haunt her
bedroom window. Nights she dreams
Dad is back, cooking up a storm
in the kitchen. Mornings he slept in
I climbed into bed to ask help
with the math my brain wasn’t ready for.
Of course it all makes sense to me
now, snow battering the ear
flaps of my trapper hat, the black dolphin
fins of my mittens, the snowblower’s
sickly stench of wasted gas, trough
tamped into berm of snow-fort,
make-believe igloo. Snow
owls pulling rabbit skins inside-out
like red socks for owlets
Mom believes to be monogamous.
