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The Consistency of Snow
Cameron Morse


Commingling foot soles with paw pads 
of dogs printing in snow 
on the back patio, I time myself, 
my time with Augustine,
 
against the white sand in the hourglass
of the sky, synchronizing 
the afternoon naps of newborn 
and two-year-old. Quite a feat to keep this soul 
 
afloat with a little breath. Quite an accomplishment
to know that God is Spirit. Is nothing 
like me in my animal body. My mother-in-law 
Facetiming from her ghost
 
town in Guizhou, her coronavirus 
quarantined apartment. China, 
no longer bustling, bristles with fear.
Errant otherwise housebound randoms
 
caught in the deserted grocery store 
shun and shop in silence, their snouts 
muzzled by gauze. Entering the second month 
of her maternity leave, Lili fills 
 
storage bags of breast milk 
for the freezer, readying for her return to the Montessori
Children’s House of Blue Springs. 
Her pump wheezes for a while after each extraction, 
 
clearing out the sinuses, the tubes that connect
it to the pump-valved breast shields. Outside, 
on my hands and knees, I realize 
how wrong I was about the sand simile. 
 
The snow falling on stone is not granular. 
It is splinters. Tiny white splinters prickling green 
splotches of moss, white wood 
of a shattered door to some celestial courtyard.
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