Lost in the Snow
We have circled the area for hours, unsure
where we are on the map, and when we are sure,
not sure how to get where we’re going to view
cathedrals and broken marbles in alcoves, and it’s
snowing, flakes laying a little carpet around us as we
search for a way out, a way back into a clearing while
one of us keeps looking at a map as we single-file
down narrow streets leaving a snow trail and see
a train station where we can board as soon as we
figure out where it will take us while the snow
falls and keeps falling and icing the tracks, engines
struggling and wheezing, a distant whistle, wind
swirling snow, and snow covering benches, and sky
is paper, a few birds scratching marks, one leaving
hieroglyphs on the ground beside us as we look
at the map and see nothing we know but know
that some time before long we’ll be somewhere
we want to go as the snow keeps falling and falling.
Reprinted from Solving For X (Spartan Press, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Maryfrances Wagner. Used with permission of the author.
Maryfrances Wagner
Maryfrances Wagner is the author of several collections, including Solving for X (Spartan Press, 2022); Red Silk (BKMK Press, 2022), winner of the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award; The Silence of Red Glass (Bob Woodley Memorial Press, 2018); The Immigrants’ New Camera (Spartan Press, 2018); Light Subtracts Itself (The Mid-America Press, Inc. 2008); and Salvatore’s Daughter (BKMK Press, 1995).