It Fills And Hovers Poem by Glenn Latal

Flakes flutter and glide mutely,
sopping up the overflow of sound,
coating the frictions of living in these depths.
Of what use is snow in a city?
To hasten spring by sheltering the fecund earth from the thieving cold
or husbanding a first drink to break its long thirsty slumber?
To remind us of the nothing hence we came and will return?
Swaddling us in mortality.

We scurry into and out of the cliffs
through the steam heat honeycomb nests we have burrowed into them.
The insignificant Colorado lost in the immense Grand.
Did we raise artifice to these heights?
Or were they carved by episodic floods of commuters
surging through the tessellated wadii of Manhattan?

There is a jangle and skirl of solidbody blues anchoring the morning,
chugging cattycorner through the sidewalk jostle.
Anticipation launches our famished sight careening
around the next corner, eagerly ambushing whatever comes.
This moment and place are overwhemingly tactile with merged musicians bumping shoulders and living above the corner deli.
Christmas, the first Neon and arms full of givable.

Our passionate giddiness in the wet wool foyer,
laughing at the snug cold of mid-week flurries.
Snowball scarred, glove-soaked,
our rushed voices half an octave higher.
Butter and rum and books browsed and bought
to be read and aloud, covering the covers.
We may never quite dry, but, we are warm.

You read my verse as I stoically panic at the foot of the bed.
On the stereo, the piano’s right hand is accented with empty glasses.
Just as at that club where we were to have met friends tonight.
But, then, we would have to disturb the books, and they look so peaceful.
Maybe the use of snow is to make dressing too much bother.