Sudden Weather by John Zedolik

Sudden Weather                                                              

Imagine sledding down this hill under

soft snow that has obliterated the street’s

concrete, its hard smacks and jagged cracks,

discouraged cars and their drivers to one

or two an hour or even not at all—

better yet, a closure city-mandated

to all such wheeled vehicles, thus yielding

silence and space for your steel runners

almost as silent upon the clean desert hill

to trace thin tracks like an old master

upon a fresh canvas taut with little resistance,

so aiding and abetting gravity’s beckoning

to the bottom with the crisp wind joining

in the rush down to the level whence you

rise and climb once again for the speed

and unfettered freedom—as you pause

to think, as one grown, at the enforcement

of the grid and the high authority of the red light.