Snow fell.
Quiet reigned
aboriginal and free
amid snow’s mystery.
Only the rabbits
left their tracks
to let us know
life still goes on
despite levels of emergency
tossed to and fro
by weather-casters
who took over the news
while Ukrainian children were bombed,
while fishermen’s boats were blown apart,
while military heroes were called traitors,
while brown and black people were secreted away
to secret places behind fencing and weapons,
while scientists were silenced by conspiracy,
while money poured in to false fronts
put in place by false leaders spouting false claims,
while real drug-runners, insurrectionists, rapists and worse
were pardoned and promoted to prod us to succumb
to the darkness weighing down our days as well as our nights.
And still,
the snow fell.
Pure and white,
it covered up every dirty secret.
It hid all sin from our sight.
it made us believe again.
In what?
What happens when it melts again,
as it surely will,
as it has since the Wampanoag
and every tribe lost its place,
as it has on every plantation
where enslaved persons
plotted to run away,
as it does now with every bonus paid to an ICE agent
subduing a person of color and hiding them away.
It snowed last night.
It is freezing and cold today.
Snow did not create an emergency.
We did.
And, we keep trying to cover it up.
It snowed last night.
annarino writes 