99: Hiding Buildings

Sometimes the city hides itself,
Powdered snow blessings make icy valleys
Shape-shifted by those windy kisses;
Mimicking dunes of the Sahara at a better time,
Images imagined in collective minds walking
separately, heads facing the ground
that is there no longer, covered by wintry makeup,
white sugary crystals crunch to remember them by.

Look up, if you can - fur-trimmed hood's like a helmet
as we battle this force, this common enemy.
Knee-deep mounds are burial grounds,
dead trees smile with complacence
As the arrival of old visitors take their regular places
Sitting on naked limbs and branches
(Can coldness bring forth warmth?)
and disguises imperfections with diamonds
- if the light hits it right -
Rooftops twinkle with newly-fashioned garb
as if they've been painted
with the most fleeting element that could ever be touched.
They know nothing of the disappearance,
the loss that awaits them with the coming sunshine,
the gold,
the life,
that rids everything away.

And at the end - hear the peace, the calm,
the aching stillness,
the absolutist power of falsified zen.
Everything muted - convincingly, and I was the witness
to the secret of frozen time, once and again:
And the stars cover me, rest upon my shoulders lightly,
with grace,
with reverence,
like I asked them to.