Snow Day (Home Alone)

As if I had dreamed the snow
into falling,
I wake to a world
blanked out
in its particulars,
nearly erased.

This is the silence
of absolute whiteness—the mute
birds nowhere
in sight, the car
and animal tracks
filled in,

all boundaries,
as in love,
ambiguous.
Sometimes all we have
to go by
is the weather:

a message
the snow writes
in invisible ink,
what the sky means
by its litmus
colors.

Now my breath
on the chilly window
forms a cloud
which may turn
to rain later,
somewhere else.


All We Have to Go By, by Linda Pastan