After Snow
It fell at night, while I
read a war novel
where people died
terrible deaths,
cannons rolled
on the earth, banners
announced loyalties.
Morning time, it stopped,
a sheet. Tight to the edges –
the way a mother would do it.
Sipping tea, hot, feeling ok
about the world and things.
They come, mid-afternoon:
Footprints, thousands
every way where
paths used to lay.
Tongue burnt from tea
too hot, I feel badly
about the way things have turned –
wishing to be in the frontlines
where pathless fields make more sense.
