As winter looms, comes in October the first serious snowfall.
The sky lowers and dulls as daylight loses direction
And the snowflakes fall, so many, so many, innumerable,
Covering the bare earth and the green grass, covering the stones,
The fallen yellow poplar leaves, covering the dogs' graves.
One white universal blanket detailed only in shades of blue and grey
Covers and replaces the specificity of summer life.
As that pitiless merciful blanket covers this scene
Of deaths, burials and repeated losses,
Where the dogs whose brief lives I called into existence
Obstinately crept away from me one by one
To crawl back into the oblivion of earth (so many, so many),
May these snowflakes fall also on me, cover my mind, blanket my heart,
Chilling and hiding the lost ones at last with their soft inexorable touch,
Obliterating finally the hot painful specifics of remembering.
—oOo—