Poem and Day 7, Caught Up!

8 Foot Snow

They say “Storm of the Century”.
But to us, the explorers of our age,
the outside is finally what we see on TV
when the cable’s out.

During the preliminaries,
we build intimidating fortresses
from mixing bowl shaped blocks.
We snow angel the yard so much,
it looks like heaven’s graveyard.

Day Two, the Snowmen come to visit.
They are happy squatters
whom we welcome with scarves and mittens.
The plows hum by,
the Snowmen wave them on
and the clouds piece off and off and off.

Things start closing by the third.
The plows can’t spare the side roads
so we sled around abandoned cars.
Adults are always shaking their heads,
holding hands up and stretched out
like weighing, like reading bones
that are melting and running off
back into the gathering.

By four, the outside is a quicksand,
it looks the same except the Snowmen
are now wading to their hourglass waists.
Then to their buttons, wooden armpits,
till finally behind hoarfrost view screens
we see those wide coal eyes
disappear into this cotton deluge.

After that, the vehicles go under.
The banks loom of precipitate calamity
while we try to shovel them out,
but fail, arms tire and eyes
watch our roady companions get blanked out.
We hope for their sakes,
the radios still work.

Six days in, news breaks.
Our state has changed its name to Emergency.
We straddle a ladder to the roof,
where we pitch the snow back
to the clouds that have settled in our yards.
We are worried our roofs will cave
and we will hibernate
into spring or the next world.

It stacks past the windows.
Like living in a cake.
We dig tunnels to our neighbors,
look for the sun to cross our thin view.
In our caves, thinking food, fire—
all the same deep buried in the sky.