Snow in August by Catherine Stearns | Poems Rethabile Likes
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Snow in August by Catherine Stearns
Snow in August
by Catherine Stearns
The heat had locked itself inside the house for days,
each breath a small surrender to the weight
of Mississippi in July. The floorboards held
the memory of bare feet, the screen door's slam.
Then something shifted in the light — not cooler,
just stranger, as if the sky had turned its pockets out.
From the high branches of the sycamore,
white began to fall: not ash, not petals, not the usual
mockery of summer. My mother stopped mid-sentence,
her hand still on the pitcher of sweet tea.
My father looked up from his paper, folded it once,
and said, Well, I'll be. We watched it gather
on the porch rail, on the hood of the Chevrolet,
on the zinnias that had given up blooming.
It was snow, real snow, though the air stayed thick
and the creek never lost its green. We stood there
until the last flake fell, and then we waited
for someone to explain the unearned miracle,
but no one came. Only the quiet afterward,
the melt already starting, the world returning
to its ordinary burning. That was the year
I learned that wonder doesn't ask for witnesses —
it simply happens, white and brief, and leaves
the heat behind to finish what it started.
each breath a small surrender to the weight
of Mississippi in July. The floorboards held
the memory of bare feet, the screen door's slam.
Then something shifted in the light — not cooler,
just stranger, as if the sky had turned its pockets out.
From the high branches of the sycamore,
white began to fall: not ash, not petals, not the usual
mockery of summer. My mother stopped mid-sentence,
her hand still on the pitcher of sweet tea.
My father looked up from his paper, folded it once,
and said, Well, I'll be. We watched it gather
on the porch rail, on the hood of the Chevrolet,
on the zinnias that had given up blooming.
It was snow, real snow, though the air stayed thick
and the creek never lost its green. We stood there
until the last flake fell, and then we waited
for someone to explain the unearned miracle,
but no one came. Only the quiet afterward,
the melt already starting, the world returning
to its ordinary burning. That was the year
I learned that wonder doesn't ask for witnesses —
it simply happens, white and brief, and leaves
the heat behind to finish what it started.
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