some thoughts on snow
in a high mountain desert
at midnight
by Carmen Miller
‘Saving water is always in season’ proclaims a sign in the bathroom.
It’s familiar. It attracts no more notice than the soap dispenser.
We speak of the snow, good for skiing or not, how much fell in the mountains. We look at Baldy.
Unsaid is that this is next year’s water. Unsaid that it will put out next year’s fires.
Here the clouds are painted on. Here sunset turns the sky to flame,
A thousand shades every night.
Here place-names are evocations more than labels:
Blood of Christ
sun-between-hills
Mother Waterway
Out the car window, the earth drops away in a streak of brown (shade 53/100)
And you see that the plain going by was the top of a mountain, worn flat by time.
Here deep furrows in the earth show where water ran,
Slowly for years
Or in one rushing instant.
Here we exclaim when the river has water in its bed.
Snow flutters down gently in the dark.
Here the sky stretches on forever
And we remember how to dance in the rain.