The skies are graying the way a beard does -
quickly, in patches, reducing to inaction.
The snowflakes are clotting on windows and what was
pavement. Everything is blurred by the muted refraction
of winter's revival.

The roads are covered as by a great tundra migration -
steam billowing; forward; the herd tries to shuffle and surge.
The cautious elders to the bucks grant no abdication,
each holding their angle to a point of merge,
until their arrival.