snow...

SNOW: I

by C.K. Williams

All night, snow, then, near dawn, freezing rain, so that by morning the whole city glistens
in a glaze of high-pitched, meticulously polished brilliance, everything rounded off,
the cars submerged nearly to their windows in the unbroken drifts lining the narrow alleys,
the buildings rising from the trunklike integuments the wind has molded against them.
Underlit clouds, blurred, violet bars, the rearguard of the storm, still hang in the east,
immobile over the flat river basin of the Delaware; beyond them, nothing, the washed sky,
one vivid wisp of pale smoke rising waveringly but emphatically into the brilliant ether.
No one is out yet but Catherine, who closes the door behind her and starts up the street.