Matthew Caretti

Recollections of Snow

Always when I return to the mountain, a drift of memories. The first flurries, then new layers day by day. Each limb of the old pine hefting a fresh consignment. How we’d watch long into the gloaming. Listen to the distant grumble of plows. Then forestall a deepening of the quiet.

mozart's fifth
taking up
the quilt of night

Soon Grandma would swaddle herself by the fire. Gazing out the window in between readings of her worn Farmer’s Almanac. She’d whisper predictions of a flash freeze. Go on to imagine the sagging limbs. Reach stiffly for her mug.

solstice moon
spilled glühwein 
spices the snow

I’d often retire early. Burrow deep under the many layers of flannel and fleece until the shivers stopped. Then curl beside the tired lamp. Cold-cracked fingers prying open Jack Gilbert’s last collection, kindling for the warmth of a dream.

of snow and sea
a white susurrus
settling in

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About the Author

Matthew Caretti began publishing his poems in 2009, though his fascination with Eastern short-form genres began much earlier. In 2020, he won the Genjuan International Haibun Contest’s Cottage Prize for “Call to Prayer” and received Honorable Mention recognition for “The Car in the Petrol Station Lot” in the Haiku Society of America’s Haibun Contest.