Gregory Djanikian: After the First Snow

As if in a dream,

you suddenly find yourself walking

in a still country

of snow and moon and trees,

cold and uncomfortable,

blindly pushing

as if your life depended on it

to shelter somewhere on the far side of a field,

or to a place half-conceived,

or perhaps forgotten,

and you find yourself looking down, focusing

on nothing

but the hypnotic, even movements of your stride

and the snow-covered boots

that fall on nothing but snow,

and as you chart your next

turn, you begin to realize that only

your movement

distinguishes you

from this ambush of stillness,

the arrangement of parts, each still

in itself, uncommunicative,

the collapse of motion,

relativity, proportion, order,

and as the mind abandons

the grace and fluidity of motion,

your movements become irregular

and unattractive,

and you begin to stiffen, grow tired,

and gradually,

as you feel your own weight

tottering

above your legs, you begin

to submit, and before the last turn,

near a cluster of bare, empty-headed

trees, stop,

and let all resistance pass out of you,

and as your mind stretches toward that expanse

from where you could have come,

the snow begins to shape itself around you

and you become a part of the whiteness

and the cluster

yet wholly distinct and still

as if in a dream,

as if you had never seen this place

of snow, of moon, of trees, here

as though nothing were yours,

not even

the slight sounds

of your breathing.