The Art of the Snowday

It wasn’t hard to master.
Before children it was one way.
So many things seemed filled
and content. The hum
of so many: i.e.,
the refrigerator,
how it opened
and closed, startling the air, the washing machine,
all its hands
through clothes; a good blanket
extending bedhead permission —
and the cigarette
silk of the talk radio voices.
This is Craig
Shankman. This is Radio Lab. This
is what happened
to the Knicks. This is
what happens
to mole rats when they forget their young.

Since then in gaining
I have lost something everyday.
Not door keys or a mother’s watch.
I lost all of the Pittsburgh
I once owned
and a song
that belonged to everyone. I had
the last copy and sometimes
when you kind of glare at me
for no reason
I know a reason.

Before the job
got serious, and the marriage . . .
but wait—
I once used a snowday
to write this line: Buried world,
pray for me . . . that I never leave my life
in a place where I can’t find it.
Okay. I admit. And there’s no easy way
to say this:
I did leave it somewhere. My life.
I can’t find it.

I’m sorry. This was supposed to be a snowday,
not a poorly written
SAT prompt
crying out from the wilderness
like the abominable snowman:
What on earth are we for?
it asks, impolitely,
answer this question
on the lines provided. You have
twenty minutes:

We are here for Time, its flights and fancies. As its sketchpad and scuttlebutt. Its placeholder. We are not here to ask questions. Bookends and ashtrays. Its unwashed grapes. And since, dear reader, you have to read this and calibrate the score with someone else, I’ll ask: Time, why must you drink so much cheap whiskey? We were your children. You passed out and forgot us into adulthood. Stop shaking me like some Polaroid you snapped so you wouldn’t forget me. Time, you harlot, you slept with all my friends and not me. Why?