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.
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.