The soundless character
Of snow was like a mood.
Out after supper, we
Felt both thrilled and subdued:
Our street had been transfigured
Into a lovely waste
But for the cones of lamplight
Its boundaries effaced.

We’d play touch football, passes
Wobbling from mittened hands;
We’d skid round, lacking traction
That stopping or cutting demands.
We’d pause for barreling plows,
The night’s true juggernauts,
That cast off fans of snow
Like ocean-slicing yachts.

Disbanding, we could hear
Long after we could see
Each other; night resumed
Its mute autonomy,
Emptied of us and filling
With the thick-slanting snows
Through which occasional cars
Would—their chains jingling—nose.

—Timothy Steele