Letter Home to Madras

The first thin flurries of Virginia snow

this season came through the oak, white,

like the opened pages of a letter

I write, rewrite, trying to say

            I am well, I am without

complaint,

            without sounding defensive,

complacent, and I look

into the wild carousel

of movement the wet flakes

make as they tear

            out of the high oceans

of cloud and ricochet

off the red

leaves and the roof

             and the side of the house and I say

             instead I have waited so long

for the snow, the air is drowning in white.

How do I say the days

are tearing me loose from the high, tapered

branches because I struggle between

this multiple adjunct

life I live and my need to walk

into the calm rigors of my own choosing:

                                   I want

another kind of living. It is not enough

that the snow hits the concrete

and disappears, fingers

of damp on the sill. How do I say

I travel so much I am

in constant exile from the place

I live in,

            even now, the language I speak

changes. Not enough that the sky

            empties its grey in less

than an hour, while I sit,

waiting.

I dream of the white incessant falling, not

like wedding rice, scattered, showered, but

streams, continuous. How do I say I came, wanting,

            across the oceans, and I live,

            wanting, because each world

is like the one before it: America offers

its own exclusions. How do I say

what I want to say without the rupture

of distance splitting the words untenderly

open between us. I say:

            what kind of weather

are you having?