I had never seen snow before I moved to the plains.

I didn’t know something so light, bright, soft, and fluffy

could bring so much darkness in the night

I didn’t know that there was a certain kind of wind,

that when it blew,

you could feel in your bones

I didn’t know that the prairie,

when being tossed about in a blizzard,

could be such a frightening and desolate place… enveloped in the screaming white

I have come to believe that after a storm, when everything is so hushed and so bright...

during the still

during the calm

that it is actually the world holding its breath

"Is it over?

... are we done now?"

~E.G.

I wrote this piece envisioning the silence after a snow storm as the world peeking out, seeing if the worst has past. To me, the quiet blanket of snow that finally settles after a howler is a period of quiet relief and peace.

#snowstorm #blizzard #calm #quiet #snow

Seeds removed

goop scraped

faces carved

but the candles?

The candles are AWOL,

so in dadly duty I drive

to the “Big K,” as the sign

with the gull-nested angle

proclaims. For a few more weeks.

The news and the thing itself are

not the same thing, the announcement and

the tacked yellow banner are

not the same thing as the shelves

low-stacked with intermittent sweaters,

50 percent off and the shelves themselves $190,

worn and smirched in this stumbling outpost,

workers clinging to it as it clung to this

ledge of a town from which everything

Falls, leaves or burns or dies. Kmart.

A birthday party at noon last Sunday meant

a trip at ten to here for a

pink cat that stuffs itself into a doll,

like a burst button at eight meant

a trip to the notions section at eight-thirty,

and an unexpected houseguest meant

a pillow and sheet set before close,

and like a shuttered factory and a lack of gas money meant

a trip to apply at one of the town’s biggest stores

in hopes of a blue vest and a paycheck.

I got the candles, some socks and a pack of

wide-eyed sewing needles for $17.56

plus a private confession.

Somehow, I give a damn about Kmart.