Flurries

In the snow my children wanted. In the shadow of clouds.

My left hand still scarred where I scraped my knuckles against the brick wall. Here I am parted
from the laundry basket, the skillet of eggs, from the dog’s expectant snuffling. In the snow
spills of cracked ice falling from white pine needles to woods’ muffled floor.
Wood floor woods’ floor the birds here are the same birds.

Scarred wooden tabletop. The idle knife. I’m within what I know and away from it. A light snow
descends as if uninvolved with the landscape.

Back to the familiar finches.
Everywhere, the mind’s topography threaded strangely. Fog on the plains, river’s hard water.
Ducks along the Dnieper, entanglement and flight.

That white blossom: O. umbellatum. Star of Bethlehem, Muscovite cross.

Snow on embankments. O.

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Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania, where she is writing coordinator for DeSales University.