Whiteout

The snow sheets down,
Blanketing the world in pristine white,
Harsh in its purity.
People enter bathed in it,
Baptized by the cold and the snow, melting in their hair.

In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.

Objects disappear, devolve
Into piles of pure white,
One lump
Indistininguishable
From another. The snow
Penetrates, it
Procreates,
Multiplying in nooks and crannies,
Covering all the hidden secrets of the world
In mute acceptance.
Turn your back for a moment and what you seek is
Gone,
Has vanished into a sea
Of white that numbs your hands as you dig,
Dig,
Dig, searching for your buried treasure.

And yet
In the cold
There is warmth,
There is a core of heat as old as the earth;
A cold heat that soaks into your bones,
That saps the strength and energizes,
That rebuilds and remakes you
In its own image
As it destroys what you once were.
And it is white

(so white)

All around, pressing down,
Penetrating
And pure, filling your vision and mind with
Ancient vistas,
Snowswept plains from the dawn of time
When gods were dreams.

It is a white of corrections, of
Failed impulses, of
Restarts and rewinds and redos,
Echoes of memories painted over and written over,
Forgotten
But still there,
Underneath it all.