Fabric

When steel-wool clouds tumbleout of the west, and the air hoversbetween thirty-five and twenty-fiveFahrenheit, winds varying north

to southwest, it will snow. Your mindlongs for it and over it: day snow amidsoil chunks of the winter disking likethe season’s dotted-swiss, weather always

ending as it begins, out in the air,unborn. Or night snow comingto its material self, stiffer,doubled into hem, white-stitched,

out of view as you shuffle throughthe cold house, the warmth ofcovers evaporating, like a kisson your neck to return. Somewhere

in this pattern, a snag or dropped stitch,a thread that does not stretch itselfor straighten to fit the design—a young robin you see like a dream

through the kitchen window, fallenfrom a February nest, a lone period ona white page, still alive for the second,on a pillow of new snow.