A Moment White Poem by John Beaton

(for snow)

You lit upon the land one night,
a night of drifting lightness
when Earth became, beneath the flight
and fall of superincumbent white,
a lintel for your brightness.

You seemed at first pristine and pure,
too pure for any boot-print,
then through my window's aperture
I saw a rabbit's tell-tale spoor:
tri-footprint; jump; tri-footprint.

So out I walked and broke a track,
a track like some small Yukon
Trail where trees with bended back
had bowed their boughs so none would crack.
I climbed a creek to look on

its frozen headwall waterfall,
a fall of pools and plunges.
Arrested in a timeless stall,
it hung in air devoid of all
the movement ice expunges.

You cloaked the creek-side path knee-deep
near deeps that brooked no bottom—
black waters roiling in their sleep
below the ice panes would not keep
the wintry vows of autumn.

The icicles would, tear by tear,
in tears dissolve, transforming
to waterfalls again. Each spear
of ice, like you, would disappear
in watersheds of warming.

But while I stood and gazed at you,
for now so whitely glowing,
your short-lived beauty chilled me through;
I wished that I could blanket you
and ease you in your going.