Too Cold to Snow

He would tell her, “it’s too cold to snow,”

some old farmer’s tale of winter weather

predicted and sometimes he was right,

often enough to make her believe him,

young girl that she was, in awe of him,

but he was wrong, too, more often perhaps,

the ground covered and coated with snow

and ice and cold, not cold enough,

and the snow falling, obscuring her landscape,

his prediction nothing but an old farmer’s tale,

a myth untested, untried, untrue, as he was,

filling her with a coldness bred

of his own breeding, unable to love,

to give back the awe that she herself had

and lost in growing cold with time and age,

but not too cold to keep the snow from her life,

closing her in and shutting others out,

just cold enough to freeze a heart,

a heart unable to love,

too cold to snow,

too cold to love.