Waiting for Snow

At night you clear a space on the railing for new snow to fall.

You have a bent for reckoning, and you’re patient:

you watch, you wait, then you measure. Soon flakes

swarm under the porch light like bees settling:

bees of light in a hive of light. They’ve blown

from the swollen fields of the sky. Now they want to embrace

everything. In the yard the next morning, there are no longer

any hard edges, only curved, gravid shapes.

With one hand you sink your coffee mug into the white

arm of the railing. With the other you insert the ruler: four

and one quarter inches. You pick up your coffee mug

and step back into the kitchen where your lover is pushing

her hair from her face. You realize all this time you’ve

been hoping she would wake, and now she has.