Snowed In

There's a foot of snow on my porch. The dog's already curled himself into a wool blanket.  I think this poem is beautiful:

Falling

Snow buries cars and yews and garbage cans
Beside the dirty beige garage sits so
Delicately on the unwavering maple limbs.
A girl of ten who cannot sleep for
The excitement and enchantment of it
Watches the great specks falling through the globe
Of yellow light that is the streetlight nearest
To her house, the house in which she lies in bed
Protected from the dreamy descent of endless sky,
Protected from the wet and cold. Safe.

She feels her heart beating and it seems loud,
Louder than it should be but then she thinks how
It's something she never truly listens to, she's never
That still or the world around her isn't that still.
It's scary, this heart inside her chest that lives
Its own life, that one day will stop and she,
As they say in the tales she reads, will be no more.

Come morning, it may still be snowing.
A friendly important man on the radio
Will announce there is no school today.
She will be free to sculpt the drifts
And prairies into igloos, tunnels and walls,
To place snow on her tongue and taste
The cool airness, to feel the sting
Of wind-sifted flakes on her face.

Now, though, she goes to the window
And stares and stares. The snow feels like the heart
Of the whole world, falling, falling and perfect.

--Baron Wormser
from Scattered Chapters (Sarabande Books, 2008)