What the Snow Covers

is the witnessing grass
pressed down by boot
in joy or fear and
cut by dangerous blades
and neighbor’s gazes.

What the snow uncovers
is the secret parade,
the pawed passage
of shivering midnight
moonlight scavengers.

What the snow covers
is its own white with
further white, soft light
made heavy after its
nomadic fall, the flakes
ache to settle, nestle, wait.

No one talks about
the uniqueness of the blade
of grass or an orange leaf
after the snowflake. After
the snowflake nothing
is singular again. Only
the sharp star of ice,
only the tableau of
snow covering the lawn.

What the snow uncovers
is the antiquity of the
moment before. What
did we lose for this
Kincaid landscape? Did
anything live in the world
before? The tyranny of pretty
is a quiet neighborhood
white with snow before
the blowers blow their
gasoline stink over
the smothered land.

“Wipe it away,” we
say. “Erase it all.”
The deficiency of
yesterday is the wound
we cannot suture.
Cover it all. Let it
snow. Let it snow.
Let it snow.

Brian Lutz teaches at Delaware Valley University. In 2003 he was named Poetry Laurate of Bucks County, PA. His poetry has been published in numerous journals including Slate, Potomac Review, Louisville Review, Poetry East, Cider Press Review, Poet Lore, Apple Valley Review and Cimarron Review. Brian lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, two kids and three cats.