Irrelevant Shadow Snow

After one of those late spring stormlets
That dust the higher elevations
For maybe a day, the afternoon

Up lonely barcode road holds pockets
Of receding white like petticoats
Around the roots of ponderosas,

The spots kept cooler by their shadows,
The pines keeping moisture for themselves.
If they don’t wholly melt by sunset,

It’s lovely and it’s spooky all night
And the next morning before daylight,
Especially with a clear-sky moon,

So many glowing, ghostly kerchiefs
Laid down through the dry-country forest
Scattered over sandstone and basalt,

As if the pines were ballerinas
In an epic, moonlit performance
Of Swan Lake, with twenty-thousand swans

Receding into black cliffs, as if
Some demented pointillist had come
To paint a landscape of marbles

Emerging from onyx horizons,
As if the moon itself had laid down
A nest of embryonic lunettes.

Yes, yes. Precious and irrelevant,
Not to mention irresponsible,
While the peopled world consumes the world,

To sneak up to high country at night
When the moonlit road is empty and
The ponderosas twirl in tulle skirts.