Snow Falls from Branches
by Damien Uriah
Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.
Instead, I wince at mid-day half-light. Through the only window,
it reinvents this small apartment I will lose at the end of January.
I will choose to notice this unhurried moment, so I can bring it back
into the sweet salvation of the dream of winter,
the dream in which I am drying and sorting husk from seed.
Outside, the occasioned wind makes a dusting of snow leap
from ponderosa needles into the air, carrying daylight to the earth.
And thicker, blind white clusters lapse from bare aspen.
I think of how this is like a secondary snowfall
but with an even softer rhythm—like an accent on emptiness.
Beyond the trees however, cars groan over a highway.
I can hear them through the walls
running to a call to which perhaps, for survival, I should respond.
But then I remember a sermon I heard as a child.
The good Lord’s work
is already finished.
