Soft snow, inch after inch, a few hours on the clock,
a porch chair sports a downy ten-inch pillow. Each twig
grabs bragging rights to long white evening gloves
and wind-bows to the great wonder of the universe.

That’s how it starts, as if winter’s world is magic,
sunshine pierces the white to squints, plush
up to the wells around the blue spruce, mashed
where someone tried to walk a dog. Squished
into inches of ice on the road with so-what hashtags
from chains in a town without plows. At the bottom
of a bowl of steep hills, days upon days
of inches upon inches over the boot tops,
the little dog’s cough.

Now daggers haunt the roof. Three feet
of saber rattling, overhang, danger.
The sky grays up for more ice, double dose,
freezing rain that over a day or maybe two
might melt snow. After ice. Then floods.
The plagues. Rivers full, over the edge,
and we see dog pee in old snow,
how the kids are all over the fun
of sledding, and everyone is out
of eggs. Housebound makes a good person
mean as a snake, come too close I strike,
or grab a dagger and gut the sad-bent rhodies.

They say it’s going to be warmer in Washington, DC.