Two Poems

Snow In town, the snow begins to grey the moment it sets down, as if shocked by its own allure. Out here, it holds its whiteness deep into February and March, the fields frosted with cream you might gladly drown in. The whiteness an idea of itself colourless water is just beginning to dream, an idea crystallizing into shape one side at a time until there are six sides to the argument it cannot win and it thrusts its chest out with pride, false pride because all it did was slow down, allowing the coldness within to emerge. Why white? So white the eye rebels against absorbing it all, white as sheets, as bandages before the splash of blood, white as the breasts of partridges, as love before the kiss, white as heat that bows its head.   Lot's Wife The Bible leaves so much out. Lot’s wife turned to salt for her disobedience and there’s the moral, the end. But not for Lot, not for the seasoned hunger in his heart, his cankered tongue. Chunks of her are offered in spite as sacrifices to cattle, emerging from the holy river with steaming flanks in the haughty sun, flies at the ragged edges of their wounded rolling eyes and there in the withered grass a salve for tongues thick with spittle, and yes their milk was sweet. Smaller pieces of the woman of his heart wrapped in silk traded from the Bedouin thrust in Lot’s belt so the griever may refresh himself as he toils in his fields. Pieces of her ground to small crystals the Bedouin took away, bound for the Orient, for the silver shakers of veiled women of property. Yes, there was thirst in the land, yes, yes, there was a quenching.