Where I Live

It's snowing today (waaaah) -- the first snow of the season. It seemed an appropriate time to share this poem I wrote years ago. I can't find an original draft or anything with a date on it, but I remember writing it while at school in North Carolina, so it must have been either the fall of 1993 or 1994. (I'm old.) Enjoy.

Where I Live

The first snow hits by mid-October.
Bright orange days of fire and warm wind
blot out slowly in a blur of white.

I walk outside
        a few wet leaves still cling to apple branches
I stretch my arms
        houses line the streets, hushed sentinels
I raise my face to the slate grey sky
to the shavings of ice trembling down
        the air is still warm
and the flakes melt to tears on my cheeks.

It won't last;
Autumn must die by degrees.
The snow that swoops with gentle determination
folds into itself as it falls,
dissolves as it brushes the ground.

Where I live nothing succumbs
to the first blast.


~RCH~