



i’ve begun to hold you again
colorful cardboard portal
young men gripping bats
like no one ever ages
i used to take you for granted
trade you, shove you into
shoe boxes, stacking Tigers
and Orioles, reading statistic
after statistic, the only math
that ever made sense
now with gray hair, you are
mine again, behind plastic
i cradle delicate memory
this time around i know
nothing lasts forever
thinking always about chess
like words gliding through
space and time, these
pieces of royal motion
an endless game of poetry
those frozen crystals
one after the next
swirl and gust, dance
in sky, as we stare
hoping streets turn white
with each inch on ground
silent time arrives
waiting by the radio
listening to county
after county close schools
for children only think
of sledding and cocoa, and
knocking powder off oak branches
landscape like the untouched moon
today with Zoom the flakes
still descend, but screens trap
the young inside their computers
a flat warm world without end
no more snow days