All We Have to Go By

--Linda Pastan

As if I had dreamed the snow

into falling,

I wake to a world

blanked out

in its particulars,

nearly erased.

The is the silence

of absolute whiteness- the mute

birds nowhere

in sight, the car

an animal tracks

filled in,

all boundaries,

as in love,

ambiguous.

Sometimes all we have

to go by

is the weather:

a message

the snow writes

an invisible ink,

what the sky means

by its litmus

colors.

Now my breath

on the chilly window

forms a cloud

which may turn

to rain later,

somewhere else.