The Hour Before Snow

The light goes the color of skim milk, and the field holds its breath in the gray— every fencepost a held note, every crow a comma in the white margin of afternoon.

You can taste it before it arrives, that mineral hush on the tongue, the way a house leans toward its own warmth and the chimney exhales its slow gray rope.

Somewhere a dog stops barking. The wind lays down its instruments. Even the river thinks twice, slowing at the bend to gather its thoughts in ice.

Then the first flake, undecided, descends like a question no one asked but everyone was quietly, all morning, waiting to answer.

And the world becomes a page turned over before the writing, the soft erasure beginning— roof, road, the bare apple tree learning to wear its silence.