I Have Been a Spy

Relying for its weight
on the illusion that it never will abate,
this mottled ply of January snow
on city brick (besides its tricking us
into the gelid dream that all the endlessness
of February, once it comes, will never go)
is not unlike July (implying August

in a ceaseless creaseless summer):
but I have been a spy
all year and can report
that this thick invitation to succumb
to numbing humming schemes of stasis
has no basis – except, of course, in its sly
intimation that no moment can be captured

or escaped. As we muse on Time
again, and wonder what the substance
is of “then” or “when” the snow falls
in eternity: and change is as illusory
as constancy. We are in a lively
silent joke, my little poky empanada,
slipping ‘round the spokes of tricycles,

lubricated by God’s dripping icicles
that harbor steamy thunder
and the starkest frigid wonder
in each drop. Think of that,
my little sweet cascader,
as you watch each
snowflake pop.

.