Snow is magical. It can sweep into a city, color an entire landscape in pristine white, and move on to the next town in a quite hush. I’m kind of on the edge of my seat waiting for Snow to make an appearance in Ohio. : )

Elaine Elizabeth Belz
NEW YEAR’S EVE

Words hang in a thick fog between us,
hiding your subtle expressions from my view.
Our gestures have slowed to meaningless ritual.
The constant falling snow is white air,
tangible enough to almost grasp.
It covers up our footprints,

just like it smoothed over the wound where the sun
burned its escape-hole in the glacial sky.
We watch the sun fade, fade away…

While we stand here, frozen,
waiting to succumb to some new Ice Age
and leave the bones of our interactions
for future paleontologists to decipher,

committing this scenery to be preserved
under the layers of our fallout.
In playful wisps the drifting powder
whirls like chimney smoke, or ghosts
of carefree autumns, summers, springs –
The past unwinds, driven by the wind.
It melts to nothing if you try to hold it on your tongue.

So winter lays its numbing pall on us:
even the glimmer in your eyes
is frosted over now, and dimmed…
From behind its glassy scar tissue,
the glowing sun winks smugly,
sears into my breast a yearning
to also blaze through the icy veil, into heaven,
and set myself among the eternal stars.

A little project a friend and myself started (but never finished) a few years ago.