new/ancient snow

    From Palmer Road suddenly we walked out onto Bloomfield, in a flurry of cold ‘popcorn’ snow swishing off the black umbrella, Bloomfield become a pure new ribbon of white ice without a single track so thickly did the new snow fall & fall & fall, erasing all differentiation, and in that late frosted moment I found myself walking every lonely backroad in the world, for a thousand miles this same endless avenue stretched to Wyoming & counties you never heard of, past empty pastures & granite deadfalls, little-used roads where snow fell huge & silent into pine barrens & fishbone cottonwoods, not a sign of anyone just plywood tilting bus-sheds covered with wet sphagnum, needles, & ancient perpetual froze-fingered snow