When the Last Snow Came

 By Joseph Hesch

When the last snow came,
it caught all of us off-guard,
especially the mourning doves.
The dappled grey couples
sat side by side, wing to wing,
perched silently, sullenly,
in the maple out back,
its red buds aborting blast-off
for another day.
The whisper of falling flakes
was the only voice we heard.
And out against the white background
of soon-to-disappear spring snow,
stood this paragraph without words,
only quotation marks.

A while back I promised one more Winter poem. Yesterday I noticed the maple trees decided to develop their version of adolescent acne on the tips of their branches, so I figured it was time. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago, after once again hanging out in the backyard with Mollie. A soft slop of snow began to fall and every living thing outside tucked their heads between their shoulders and sighed. Including the doves. I sat down that afternoon and recorded my observations and titled it, "___" -- graphically representing two pair of mourning doves on a branch.  Once again, I was being too cryptic by any editor's imaginings.  After changing the title, the poem was published in Wanderings Magazine.