I Fall Asleep Thinking Snow – Ann Howells

awaken to black-capped birds

   inside December silence

snow dances in a dervish whirl,

   smooth rounded drifts

single line of bootprints

   mars the ice-crusted walk

& silence rings around me like a bell

I peer from windows

   filigreed with frosty plumes

listen for quiet laughter

   where snow angels sprawl a lawn

long unspoken words float

   ghosts on winter air

& silence rings around me like a bell

I stroll alone through falling snow

   compose a poem in my head

a thousand snowflakes, each unique

   glitter shoulders as I stride

the world is hushed & clean & sharp

   day rife with possibility

& silence rings around me like a bell.

Ann Howells has edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years, recently taking it digital: www.IllyasHoney.com. Her publications are: Black Crow in Flight (Main Street Rag Publishing), Under a Lone Star (Village Books Press),  Letters for My Daughter(Flutter Press), an anthology of D/FW poets she edited, Cattlemen & Cadillacs (Dallas Poets Community Press), and Softly Beating Wings which won the William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest 2017 (Blackbead Press). Ann’s work appears widely in small press and university journals; she has four Pushcart nominations.