Snow, the Novel
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Snow, the Novel
In the end it was the only story to tell:snow on the ground and snow silently falling,the landmarks of a life vanishing, the roaderased, a house half-buried, a watcher watchingfrom an upper window who knows she cannotstay and cannot go, she cannot stay or go,who, as evening falls, steps back into a cold interior,feeling her way along the winding corridorsuntil the deepening snow has overtaken all.
When the last of the last ones go, if I am oneof the last, the last to believe and the last to know,when Eternity unwrites me, when an unseen handlets loose the pen that wrote my story, and directionless,I step out of the frame into a snowy unfenced field,my tracks filling up as fast as I can make them,then will I know the story in its entirety?Know all that I need to know?The now that is snow. [End Page 186]
ELIZABETH SPIRES is the author of six collections of poetry, including Worldling, Now the Green Blade Rises, and The Wave-Maker. She has also written six books for children. She is a professor of English at Goucher College where she co-directs the Kratz Center for Creative Writing. In 2011–2012, she was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
