Selections from Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2002

How Snow Arrives

Michael Collier

The pine trees stood without snow,
though snow was in the air,
a day or two away,
forming in the place where singing forms the air.

"Mother?" is what I heard my mother say
said in such a way she knew her mother
didn't know her, as if they stood
beneath the trees and breathed the singing air.

How frail the weather when its face
is blank or, startled, turns to find
its startled self in a child's voice,
flake by flake of the arriving snow.

"Mother?" is what I say, as if
I didn't know her, standing blank
and startled where she stands beneath
the trees among the singing air.