A late April snow clouds the view of fence line
and the trees are an elegant velcro black against the hills.
The soft thrum of fattened snowflake drowns sound
into the darkening crevasses of afternoon.
The fish are biting on most anything that moves.
They hurry in fear of ice.
Today, in mid-afternoon, grandmothers will gather
around kitchen tables in electric warmth and speak softly
of other places, passions, regrets, and yearning,
while bits of snow spit outside their frosted windows.
The cows refuse to whet their calves’ desire.
Their bellies warm the earth.
They say if you can spell Mississippi with
your pee in the snow, then
you will be rich one day
or famous.
The cardinals that fight for a mate
look like splashes of blood in the street.
Once, a man built a house that he actually lost forever in a late
Spring snow because he had not moved into it yet
and so forgot its whereabouts,
such was the wild mood of his mind.
The garden daffodils that bloomed on schedule
lie bent and broken under the smashing snow.
When the first sunlight arrives, tomorrow or a week from tomorrow
I will go into the field with a virgin bucket and fill it with cold snow
and I’ll set it on my stove until it melts
and then I’ll pour it into trays and freeze it in my icebox.
And when friends come by in the mid-August heat
I’ll serve those cubes in their glasses
and that night they will dream
blue cold and milk white wintry thoughts.
Poem by Hugh Findlay
Hugh Findlay lives in North Carolina and would rather be caught fishing. He drives a little red MG, reads and writes a lot, dabbles in photography and makes a pretty good gumbo. His work has been published or is forthcoming in: Dominion Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Bangalore Review, Montana Mouthful, Digging Through the Fat, San Pedro River Review, New Southern Fugitives, Arachne Press, Pinesong, Dash, Barzakh, Shift and Bombay Gin. @hughmanfindlay