O HOLY SNOW

the way it shadows the

trees, even in the heat

of summer

some mornings

I look outside and see

February’s ermine

world

that it kills, demands

respect, numbs, warms, blinds, burns

exertion exposure

avalanche

slang for too 

much flattery

hollow

column stellar dendrite

fern crystal latticework

translucent hexagon

reflecting falling light

each has its own soul the

surface soft yet frozen

difficult to predict

difficult to measure

your six-fold symmetry

prism halo

silence

of snow gunmetal sky

before it comes tinny

and clean pleasure coming

in from it

smell of wet

wool pools melting beneath

caked boots

fluffy champagne

powder corduroy wet

hellish picturesque

the sound of shovels scraping

morning clean

depth hoar firn

the accumulation

graupel rime

accretion

ablation

the sheer wet

decoration

blizzard

squall you suspend all time 

the silence the silence

Kate Lynn Hibbard won the 2004 Gerald Cable Book Award, and her poetry collection Sleeping Upside Down was published by Silverfish Review Press in 2006. She teaches writing and women's studies at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.