Footprints In the Snow

Walking under overcast sky I trod through drifted snow, no longer bearing allegiance to platitudes disguised as wisdom spun in gingerbread houses of the holy, an asymmetrically challenged splinter on a white horizon, leaving a trail of footprints on my frozen path. Behind me lies the ranch house, shutters closed in rapid eye movement, dreaming of acres of wheat and barley gleaming in July's opaque sunlight. They will not know I've gone, will assume I'm out walking. Only as gray dusk settles on the porcelain landscape will they wonder where I am. In my dark coat and cap, shouldering a pack, I move past the fence posts where snow mounds like the litter of attic antiques reciting memories in foreign tongues. One leafless elm bears witness to my departure, waving in benign breeze. Lest my tears freeze I hold them back. Though my footprints sprint backwards in the charcoal of sacrosanct earth I must stay to my gospel: to the naked eye the flat distance may only promise glaciers, but I seek the aurora borealis hidden in daylight's dim emergence, where the crocus blooms in barren existence. 11/29/18