Outside Vienna

Summary

All these years I'm still

surprised by snow. This morning,

how it appears on lawns

and rooves, a layer of cloud

for the sledders who cluster

like enormous puppies in luminous hats.

I guess some unlined part of me's still left

in a snowless city singing Māori songs

where tide covers stone, cuddles

shingle, and a creature in the pine needles

chews through the cotton singlet

I buried one evening in the garden;

or sitting in that shitty park god knows how

far from the sea, eating

the Midwest's version of Middle Eastern

food, still drunk from the night before

and caught between the kind of crying

and laughing where you can no longer hold

your eyes open. This morning

inside other mornings, as the city nests

inside other towns, the sun steps in

to blast the snow back

so my eyes must shut,

see only blood.