Timely this poem, what with all the freak Arctic weather around, especially in the States. Of course though, you can't have a poem about a storm (or a piece of the storm) without the metaphors. Mark Strand does a good job here of forcing us to tease them out.
A Piece of the Storm - Mark Strand
For Sharon Horvath
From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
That's all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
"It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening."
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