Snow Falling

I aimed to

work all weekend. Her teacups    tiny shoes like two thimbles.

                                      I had not been well for so long.

By the time I’d wired the backyard, the right tools, a

book of specs

laid out, its diagrams and directions—that I could choose

                                      among such languages—it had started.

First as mist. As cold sheathe. Less as falling than floating

against the gray sub-

lime of pines   like a coat of what’s-to-come.    A crackling among

                                      high needles more static than

whisper. More shiver than chill. She wanted—who’s

to say then, it’s too

cold, little one, I’m not well, no, not just now—a place

                                      to play in the yard. A slide,

a swing or two. Who can say what passes for health, when

you’ve been so long

fevered. I cut the A-frames to size. Measured. Marked off

                                      spots to drill for the standing platform.

I sawed in a whiteout of  sound but for talking to myself.

There were lilacs

willing to open their black buds, all along the slippery walk,

                                      but no; black water in the creek

crusted at the banks. It was like singing, the days, I tell you,

but no, whatever song

there was was frost breaking over the grass. Wind leaning

                                      against dark limbs. I worked the weekend

through. I raised the beams, and screwed them tight, and fixed

a slide so she could

play    a swingset    a cradle of snow.

                                      A thing I made for her. And now,

it seems, for you, amid the world’s broken and shining things.