​The snow dissolves
                                     as the light declines,
                                     I turn to watch rooks unspool
over the city,
                                     rise to the scythe of the sun,
                                     before night seals the scene
and silence
                                     deepens, the skyline’s
                                     pinprick of light
is what’s left
                                     after a day where a pane 
                                     of glass sealed me off
from the world.
                                     I wish to know
                                     the lightness of snow, but
I only know 
                                     these hours when clouds 
                                     hang threadbare, dissolve in
the night,
                                     the traces of sepia 
                                     streaked into the horizon; 
twilight will fill
                                     this abyss, it’s what 
                                     greets me each night, and
the sky, the day,
                                     a sliver of light, gleams on
                                     the remaining snow, the sun 
waxes brighter, 
                                     boils away the black sea of night,
                                     brimming at the edges of the sky, 
I stare as
                                     the light washes away the residue of darkness,
                                     the hours spent listening to the drip of the tap.
                                     The rooks perch on the telephone poles,
the city awakens.
Alexander Lazarus Wolff's writing appears online in The Best American Poetry website and Poets.org, and in the North American Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, he teaches at the University of Houston where he is the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellow and assistant poetry editor for Gulf Coast. You can read more of his work at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.