Simple snowfall

It’s a cold magic today,
like the kind I remember
during the big freeze in North Carolina
when I was a young girl
and we had more than a week off school
because they’re didn’t know what to do
with all that snow.
The ice weighed down tree branches
and it looked so beautiful
but it was dangerous too.
I remember walking outside, slowly,
like any misstep would find me falling
into another world.
I tasted the fresh snow and the ice
and knew it was something purer than me.
Today is like that.
Cold and a little dangerous.
It’s too bright to be bleak
and it feels like the ground is brittle
but it’s more solid than I am,
with my changeable moods
and wandering thoughts.
I hardly taste fresh snow now
because the world is too warm
and I am so tainted it seems a great divide
but I like to watch it cover everything
as if we can all be fresh again.