The sky bulges gray around the hips of the treetops,
pregnant with snowmen kicking softly.

My knuckles sense their birth, bend white
and scale red. I knit on the porch
in search of raspberry-colored gloves.

The yarn races from my fingers and
into the street, anxious to knit itself
around the dry cobblestones.

I pull the yarn tight; the street is tense,
a trampoline in waiting.

Late afternoon, the sky births
powdered sugar through a sheet-sieve.
The ground holds in its breath, trying
to be delicate.

The children tremble on their backs,
wrapped in the street’s skin, raspberry,
black, and speckled in white.

I step under the sky and
wrap the snow in my hands.
They’re beating.