From Interview With a Farmer

Blizzard

"Holy Christ," she mumbled into her hands.
The screen door swung shut behind her and for a moment
the doorway was a frenzied place.  Her red raw hands
clasped around her mouth, crimson cheeks puffed up like
bellows feeding the fire in her fingers.
Her shoulder shoved the door shut
and the wind threw in a groan and
a few more flakes and all was silent.
She stood, breathing heavily still into her hands,
and stomped her heavy feet, twice each as is her way.
"I have hot chocolate ready for you," I said,
as she lay her stocking cap and scarf before the register.
"You're a saint," she said with tight cold lips.
"Janey called."  I wrapped my hand around the mug. Still warm.
"Oh yah?"  She hung her coat on the rack, waiting a moment,
her hand hovering over it to be sure the rack would not fall.
"Says in Florida it's sunny and 80."  I offered the mug.
She wrapped her hand around it and her fingers touched mine
and left some cold on my fingertips
and she lifted the mug to her lips and let the
steam rise over her frozen nose.  She grinned a tight grin
and shook her head.  "God, wouldn't that be nice?"  She took a tiny sip.
Her shoulders were still hunched, too many soldiers around a tiny fire.
"You're not kidding," I said.  Out the window all was white and
harried, the weather moving faster than the cars. 
"Ten to twelve, they're saying," I said.
				        "Ten to twelve more?  We've already
got six.  Be fun shoveling tomorrow."  Her shoulders had melted back into position.
"You're not kidding."  We kept an eye on the blizzard all day
and at night when snow swirled in the halo of
the streetlights.  We slept warm and in the morning
the world was white and cold and silent, reserving judgment.
I told my neighbors of Janey and 80 degrees.
"Oh yah?" they said, with a look at the steely blue sky and
flat cold sun.  "Would be nice," they all said and chuckled,
a white cloud floating from frozen lips,
and returned to shoveling their driveways and walks.
That night on the news, "Area residents dig out."
No one mentioned living anywhere else.

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