Continental Divide

How long until this winter's over? 

Last week it seemed the streets

bled dust like forgotten attic trapdoors,

a grit so solid that a thousand 

lawn sprinklers failed to carve its surface.

Now the streets run cold and black-ice slick

clear out to a snow-hill'd horizon, 

all ribbons of frost like the powdered ash

of ancient mammoth volcanos,

far out beyond this corridor of sagging 

houses and tangled, crumbled fields,

sleepwalking like a trance into an aether.