Her Snow

[essinem]

It descends delicately,
gathering massive on the ground,
laying out the world beneath
its slow, heavyweight blows.

The snow we sink in;
winter’s slough of despond.
It knows us so well, having
smothered us every year,

it starts to assume our stiff
shapes if we stay in it long,
shuffling along laurier with
coated, tied and traumatized

politico penguins, snuffling through
these prematurely buried pathways.
The snow in this city is too strong to
resist. Its pale opacity tonight is

a Canadian sublime, cool, killing
Its weight on the streets
turning sidewalks into freezing
ankle-seizing angry hills

under a pearly sky,
painted with purple
lights, pale smile on
a body’s frostbit face,

found in a snowbank.
You look at Ottawa
differently after you know
the strength of her snow

coming ungathered around us
in this isolate city,
this Hoth of a country’s
subarctic heart.