I Long For Snow

 

I long for snow again
since two years past
my breath iced in my beard,
and the grains of snow
like grains of sand, so cold
was the air of Montana.

Black ice on the highway
and tendrils of snow powder
snaked across the tar,
whipped by the vicious wind.
Slush jammed up the wipers
on the way to Bozeman.

The god damned desert
in the brutal heat
like a barren old hag
glories in its misery,
in its wrinkled infertility,
while snow drifts on the Yellowstone.

Nature's magic forms
its pictures elsewhere.
When I roamed across
the North Dakota wastes
I dreamed of Arizona;
now I think of the Great Divide

and one magnificent morning
on Beartooth Pass,
high above the timberline
with little lakes and tiny flowers
and snow forever cradled
in the laps of the godly peaks.