A Poem, God Help Us

I thought I'd try a poem today.

Snow, Dún Laoghaire.

It's not like rain, which just gets on
With the dull business of falling,
Spilling without hesitation and always
Surprised somehow to find itself spent,
Or down to a few blobs, shivering
And coalescing on the merciless prow
Of your mid-sized family saloon.

No, snow is in no rush to consummate
Its descent, but knows it cannot stay.
The hushed oyster sky can only sustain
Its trillion gauzy smudges for so long
Before each suffers its tiny deliquescence,
Or awaits that fate where a kerbside drift
Deepens like the slow accretion of sorrow.

There is time, too, by the crouching harbour
Where you leave the car, with five or six minutes
Before you are late, for you to stand, recalibrating
For snow's gentle immensity, for how it throngs
Cathedrals full of sky with plenty more to dust
A gull's pewter back or a trawler's empty deck.
There is time for you, and for every falling flake,
To swoon like listless angels to the earth.