Poet’s Corner: Snapshot

Snow melting on the buried lawns, only 8:00 a.m. 
and it’s twenty degrees warmer than yesterday.  
The black road is pooling with water the same 
dull pewter as the cloud smudged sky.

Driving to work, I slow and swing round 
one puddle half a street wide, and I see 
the sky flipped.  See the tall winter stark trees 
looming in new proportions and crazy angles, 

a reflection hard to resist. But I drive on,
the image plucking at me, and I make it two whole
blocks before I turn back. I stand in front of my car,
door left open, engine running, trying to snag a shot 
on my cell phone camera.

A car pulls up.  “You alright?”  My neighbor asks.
“Just taking a photo,” I say. “I’d better knock it off, 
last week  I got ordered off a snow bank by two cops.
Got a great photo though.”  She laughs and drives on.

When I was a kid, I would turn upside down on the couch
to see my world in a new way.  The blood rushing to my
head as the floor became ceiling and the ceiling became floor.  
I imagined how we’d live in our house with rugs above us,
and windows at knee height so we’d have to crouch down
for a view.  

To know the same place, but different.  To see it new.
Like a puddle holding enormous trees climbing up a slurry
sky. A mirror made out of melted snow.  Worth turning 
back for.  Worth being a little late to work.

Top photo: Bigstock