A Summer Dream

The cars passing through the snow
Whisper zisch! zisch! zisch!
Into the ear of the cow-faced woman
In my head, an unpretty yet pleasant face
That would fit in at the local supermarket.
She interprets the sounds of the snow
Into a message I can understand:
It’s not the zisch! that counts;
It’s the silence that swallows everything else,
The occasional beep of a horn,
Surely an annoyed late-comer to work,
The whining police car,
The skidding of brakes found too late,
All of it sipped away
through the snow’s long straws,
crowding in, crowding out everything but itself
and the cow-faced woman in my head,
her lips the color of a glass of chilled merlot.