Gravity, too, grows thick with snow,
accumulates inch by inch,
but the sensation is of flying.
I am moving over white space as it
takes itself up, the storm lifting east and
fast about my ankles, in my pockets
where my hands are tucked with change.
I’m running out of milk, out of time
in open snowlit streets; and retracing
two blocks home from the store,
I can’t find my own footprints
where I’ve just been. Not erased but
filled in, the way absences fill.
It takes no time, as if snow
fell more quickly there.
Where all winter I saw nothing, branches
brighten like stitches of lace.
Something had been there: leaves, or
the yellow clutch of bird feet, balloons.
In the crease of my coat, the pressure of
hands, an embrace. We leave no evidence.
I could lose my way easily, the path
no longer familiar, untravelled,
stranger for having been here before.
We answer the same distances, each time the first.