It has been 100 degrees or more three days this week. The thick, heavy air has been intoxicating and unbearable. Its gelatinous, sweaty mass enveloped me during my morning walk and left me longing to take just one deep breath of fresh air.

I wished for winter. And snow. The real, Midwestern kind of snow. The snow of which snowmen and snowballs and snowcastles are made. The snow that tastes like a salty slush. The snow that floats down in perfectly unique flakes, blanketing dead ground.

Enjoy this poem and be cool.

Snow

I knew how it would sound –
Even before I raised my window
One-fifth of the way
Hollow,
Resonant
Still
The song of birds
& the hum of wind
Whistling and whispering through the trees,
The only audible sounds –
Even in the distance
Where a few brave cars dare
To follow the tracks of a few brave cars before them.
The smell is clean,
All the muck of the spring, summer and fall,
Frozen and dead,
Unable to survive the icy degrees.