The First Snowfall in Minneapolis

October, 2020

Never mind the pandemic,
the people we don’t get to see.

Never mind the white that coats
leaves that are still green.

Never mind that winter came
early, or that a fog has crept over

my thoughts. In a Minnesota prison
they are having a poetry reading,

and I have twenty kids
I get to write a letter of recommendation for.

The virus that waits for us while we sleep
is unprecedented, but so is the poetry reading,

so are those twenty kids, young people making their way.
Never mind the buses that don’t run this year,

never mind they won’t wait with red ears
and red runny noses. Never mind we will have

small christmas, small thanksgiving. One bird
is bird enough for me. But what about the tents

on 42nd street, at MLK Park, now dusted with frost?
Or at Powderhorn or by the ballfields

of Nokomis? When the snow fell this morning
I didn’t remember the people in the tents,

though later I looked up a story on my phone and learned
there are tents at Minnehaha Falls, too and that

the same group that got people hotels to stay in
in the summer is helping people

find hotels now. ZAKAH. From the Muslim word
meaning the obligation to give 2.5 percent of your earnings

to charity. Never mind what you think of religion—
this one or any other—bless those people helping people

find a home. Bless them in the cold, when the snow is staying.
Bless them now in October with this dark blue bruise hanging over us this morning.

Never mind that bruise now. When the sun comes up
over us in an hour or so, it will be light. We will find our human voices

again. We will approach one another once more. The masks we wear
don’t cover our eyes. Never mind them. Mind the eyes.

The masks we wear can’t mute our words. We can
still say Hello. And How are you? And What

do you need?