The snow entered this world
through a glitch in sleep’s continuum.
The snow covered our eyes in stolen silver.
It lay with the sugar-drunk babies
in the multifold of their iron beds,
under a quilt fashioned by a northern hand.
Snow fell in axions and neurons.
Like feathers of a Christmas bird.
The air smelled of a far-off ocean.

The storm came into town on a Greyhound bus,
rolling through on big wheels and carousels,
an outcast of the subaltern’s arctic offices.
What could we do but watch its paper being torn?
All that we are is the blizzard’s narrative.
No report or goad or plea or prayer
shapes our experiences very differently.
First light applies its latent glow.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been performed and broadcast globally.