Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The Fluffy Stuff by May Swenson


The Fluffy Stuff

I want the fluffy stuff to keep coming down.
I’m looking into the garden from the third floor.
I wait for it to settle on brownstone windowsills,
on fire escapes, their narrow iron stairs.
Thin-as-tissue bits fall and rise on spirals of air
like meandering moths, and never reach the ground.
At last, dead vines on the trellis in the sooty
backyard begin to whiten. There sprouts a mat
of white grass. Tips of pickets on the fence
get mittens. Chimney tops in the opposite block
have their hoods and copings furred. The fluffy
stuff catches in crotches of the old ailanthus
whose limbs, like long dark cats stretching
on their backs, expose white bellies.

What began gauzy, lazy, scarce, falls willingly now.
I want it to race straight down, big, heavy, thick,
blind-white flakes rushing down so plentiful, so
opaque and dense that I can’t see through the curtains.


 

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