Snow

Paul Howe

It comes in the night while we are sleeping,
and in the morning the thick flakes fall like
a miracle of manna. Snow is a bit like God – 

pure, impartial, unexpected, falling on
the upturned faces of insurgents, flakes
catching like breadcrumbs in their beards, 

falling on the helmets and into the eyes
of soldiers, who blink it away like wonder
as they scrutinize vehicles at checkpoints, 

falling on marbled legs of lamb, those
cumbersome clubs of meat, that hang
from hooks in front of butcher shops.

For a moment, it lays a white sheet over
the disfigured body of this conflict. And
in the snowpack gathered on the mountains, 

in what is withheld in order to be released,
there is the promise of cucumbers and wheat
in the spring and pomegranates in the fall. But 

it only remains for a blessed intercession,
no longer than a ceasefire. Soon the snow
will be scored with the tracks of Hiluxes and

personnel carriers, turning what was possible
into a slush of disappointment, what was
dreamed into a grayer and bleaker reality.