Elizabeth Robinson

On Snow


Things fall

hesitantly,  always



so unsure of their season.


*


If the conditions


had a melody,


they would be half-aware, humming it over and over:



minor key, then major, then minor.





The world, then, is only a world inside

its own weather,


a diffident

fleck, the tune


*


worn or melted, eroded into a key


that rhymes indeterminately.


*


If melody had

a memory,  would



it be white
and so inclusive, discordant, oblivious of


gravity, afraid?


*


 and therefore a verse to itself:


since


white carefully rhymes with conditions

of atmosphere


*


the uneven simile of relation


undoes itself


as

perfect symmetry.


*


What is meant to be broken in half


so it may replicate itself—shy and off-key


rhyme—snow’s whole—


undoes itself by falling to


what it hoped was a prior circumstance, 


lopsided

season.