Heather Banks’ most recent poem to appear here was “Cactus Garden” (August 2017). 

Late Snow
By Heather Banks

Few stir along these rural roads in twilight grey.
Cows cluster darkly around columnar feed bales,
while horses’ blankets steam, hide shivers
but not tail switches that ward off stings of flakes
as bothersome as a thousand freezing gnats.
Rows of stalks remain from grain harvested months ago.
Their brush strokes, curved or straight, clasp an inch or so
of blankness, clarify fields’ rolling topography.
Dark brooks’ jag along the lowest rows.

Emerging as I round a blind curve,
half-buried daffodils blink on a steep bank
and a sudden march of grape hyacinths’ saturated blue tips
nuzzles the shoulder. Planted some fall, naturalized for years,
their brilliant silence waves toward spring.