snow {a poem}

It has become one of those winters
where it snows every other day.
In between, streets are plowed,
sidewalks are cleared,
salt is strewn with extravagant abandon,
and we're all just trying to make our way
safely through this slick, cold world
we find ourselves in.

The slush comes then:
the guck, mush, dregs, or whatever you want to call
the snow when it is so far beyond a thing of beauty
that we kick it to the curb,
stepping over it with a look of
disdainful horror worthy of a
Jane Austen character receiving an unfortunate marriage proposal,
one from her cousin—or worse, a poor cousin.

Give it a day, though, and
here comes that snow again,
whiting over the ugliness of yesterday.
It's another clean start
and it leaves us all hoping for two things:
for a better today,
and for the ability to remember this soft, blanketed world
tomorrow when it all {life, the streets, the sidewalks, our snowboots}
becomes a gray mess again.