DEEP SNOW

 

Through the mountains,
cedar and spruce
are blanketed in deep snow,
like tall Christmas angels
clothed in white.

It is another Christmas,
my brother-in-law's black truck
making its faithful passage
between my home and the farm,
where a bright-eyed dog
and two whuffing horses
with soft noses await
my arrival.

There will be a fire
in the fireplace,
a real Christmas tree in
the new big window,
and the house's new footprint
lying over the house our mother
once lived in. I wander the house,
noting the changes with delight,
small dog at my heels hoping
for treats.

So many years have passed
since we first walked the original rooms
with our mother. How she loved
her first years there, baking bread,
feeding chickens, before her health
suddenly declined and she left us
way too soon.

All beauty will be lost
but even loss can be beautiful,
the poet said. And there is such beauty
in remebering all the lost loves,
the revered humans, the
loving-eyed animals who blessed
our lives, beauty in
the layers of memories
blanketing them, the way deep snow
wraps the winter trees
in shimmering radiance.

Inspired by "Upon Discovering My Entire Solution to the Attainment of Immortality Erased from the Blackboard Except for the Word 'Save" by Dobby Gibson. Italicized lines are hers.