Flurry

“Elsa hasn’t come to our house yet,”
she says, looking at the sky.
It’s the end of winter, 
and it’s 60 degrees.

It’s hard to explain climate zones to a five year old
when every schoolroom chart, 
every book, every calendar,
portrays Winter
as a snowflake.

Sometimes, you explain, 
sometimes Winter is bare trees and light jackets,
creeks running orange,
and January dandelions.

Sometimes,
Winter is green and brown—
mud and moss, leaves and pinecones,
acorns and their top hats
scattered in the ground.

Sometimes, sometimes,
sometimes it never snows at all.

And the girl,
with a wild-haired braid 
barely hanging onto her shoulder,
gazes through a clear wood,
at an empty sky.

She holds up a small white wisp on a stem,
admires its shape,
and shakes it,
seeds falling around her feet.

“It looks like snow,”
she says.

Finished March 2023.

nature, recently written, short, parenthood, everyday life, freestyle, non-rhyming, pop culture