Blackbird Archive← v9n1, Spring 2010Poetry · Volume 9, Number 1
History Filled In
I never knew snow, this cold that burns.
Cold with a thickness of braided hair
or a man’s hand. I am leaving my mother’s town
I carry out the last of the house: eight red
door tassels and a tin of greasy silver dollars.
New telephone wires dip to grins under ropes of ice.
I have inherited, too, my mother’s hatred of the cold.
On the path to the car, my footprints are filled
as soon as I leave them, as if the snow,
like winter’s sod, sprouts to swallow them.
