The child wakens to the first snow,
(noted), of its lifetime, and says: “Milk.”
The mother takes it out so it can know
that snow is frozen water, slippery as silk,
paler than vanilla in a cone, harder, softer,
the strangest thing on Earth, so far,
stranger than its yellow urine. The mother
tugs it through the drifts, into the car,
straps it in, shakes her head like a puppydog,
and sprinkles baby’s cheeks. Baby giggles.
Window-wipers make pretty window-fans. The rug
across its lap is hot and baby wiggles
to be free of it. They seem to climb the sky.
Everywhere they look the white stuff
is. It takes them to a cloud that has an eye
of darkness, surrounded by pale puff.
But it’s the supermarket sign. Mother
takes excited baby in and buys some things.
Some day, she says, you’ll have a little brother.
Baby doesn’t understand, so sings:
caroo, caroo, milk, milk, milk. . . Baby thinks:
it’s fun and frightening, too. Curled
up, back in the car, baby, dreaming, drinks
the whole white gallon of the world.
About E.M. Schorb
E. M. Schorb has published several collections of poetry, including Time and Fevers: New and Selected Poems (AuthorsHouse, 2004), which was chosen as a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award winner; A Fable & Other Prose Poems (2002), Murderer's Day (1998), winner of the Verna Emery Poetry Prize; 50 Poems (1987); and The Poor Boy and Other Poems (1975); and a chapbook, Like the Fall of Rome and Other Humanitarian Disasters (1980).
He is also the author of two novels: Paradise Square, which won the International eBook Award Foundation's Frankfurt eBook Award for "Best Fiction work originally published in eBook form," and Scenario for Scorsese (both Denlinger's Publishers, 2000).
His poems and prose have appeared in Best American Fantasy 2007, as well as The American Scholar, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, Chelsea, The Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, The Texas Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review, among other journals.
His honors include Fellowships in Literature from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council, and grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund for Authors, and Robert Rauschenberg & Change, Inc. (for illustrations in The Poor Boy).
He lives in Mooresville, North Carolina.
