A Snow Woman
A window on a side yard in winter.
I’m reading Stevens, as usual not into it.
I decide again not to get pregnant.
The neighbor’s child’s sandbox still out there,
lid on underneath snow: White barrow
burial for troubled life’s
embraces. Romance: I see them:
Upstairs-Jeff begins a snowman
with Thérèse and the kid, and we go out and help and
we’re in an Eddie Bauer winter catalogue,
dumping snow on one another to show
we’re harmless, grinning with open mouths.
Parsnip nose, jalapeño smile, habañero eyes.
Thérèse’s sloppy velvet hat. “Regardes, Doudou,”
Thérèse just-tenured in the French department
(specialty Valéry), “la bonfemme de neige!”
Doudou flails, struggles, nearly two, down out
of Maman’s arms, drives a fist deep into
the snow woman’s middle, right deep
into it. One must have a womb of snow,
an eye of cold. One must have a blue bright beret.
Un long regard sur le calme des dieux!
