brooklyn snow poem

brooklyn snow poem

The snow is falling in three directions at once against the sienna brick of the houses across
but the storm is mild, the light even, the erratic wind not harsh, and, tolling ten o'clock,
the usually undistinguished bells of the Sixth Street cathedral assume an authoritative dignity,
remarking with ponderous self-consciousness the holy singularities of this now uncommon day.
How much the pleasant sense, in our sheltering rooms, of warmth, enclosure: an idle, languid taking in,
with almost Georgian ease, voluptuous, reposeful, including titillations of the sin of well-being,
the gentle adolescent tempest, which still can't make up its mind quite, can't dig in and bite,
everything for show, flailing with a furious but futile animation wisps of white across the white.
~ C. K. Williams, "One Morning in Brooklyn"