Snowscapes, by Kay S. Lindsey

​Snowscapes  
 
Yesterday’s filigree branches 
and low, grey clouds 
promised this…  
 
…I wrote a haiku
 
A near whiteout
…I wished
 
My fondness for how falling snow… 
Tamps down the city’s jangling distractions  
 
Fond even of how it can render me invisible to everything 
on the other side of my window…
 
Or am I? 
 
Most of all how snow lends plot, vivacity to the view…
 
The snow-spangled roof across the street 
puts me in mind of Hiroshige…
 
Hiroshige, Master of Rain and Snow
 
I could be Hiroshige’s cat gazing out another window 
overlooking the rice fields of Asakusa
 
Better still, his fine eagle swooping and diving 
over the marshes of Edo Bay     
 
To be a bird right now would suit me fine…soaring above 
this conglomerate of rooftops, circling spires, 
dodging towers, scoping gorges 
 
For a glimpse at the ripples of sidewalk life…
 
Best of all to touch down on a lightly-dusted ledge 
or shoulder of a gargoyle…  
 
Watch the tiny crystals emerge from a snow cloud
Float, twist, turn, collide, tumble and take shape, 
facet after facet, branch after branch 
into six-pointed star-ness…
 
Or melt. 
 
These would not be Hiroshige’s snowflakes… 
His dot the sky like constellations, 
eliding the details; more intent 
on the aerodynamics
of imagination.
 
Almost without notice, the squall beyond this window 
has subsided—the atmosphere no longer 
in motion…  
 
The roof across the street does not evoke Edo. 
I am not cat or bird…
 
In the blink of an eye I have been jolted 
from one dream world back 
to this one, 
 
Fitful, yet poised as always to drift 
ever so easily into the next…
                                        the next…
                                              and the next…        
                                                        .                                                                      
Kay S. Lindsey
 
Originally a visual artist, latterly, a poet, Kay S. Lindsey enjoys collaborating with creatives in variety of disciplines, most recently, a cellist. In 2001, her poem, “The Origin of Applause,” written in collaboration with a visual artist, was transformed into a public art work and permanently installed at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, Memphis, TN. Her work has appeared in journals, several anthologies and chapbooks, online and performed. A Washington, DC native, she’s called Philadelphia, NYC, L.A., Sacramento, Hawaii, San Antonio, Memphis and now Hyattsville, Maryland, home.