The hardest objects fell to white:
old workings, wheels and windlass,
chunks of anthracite like knuckles
in the pails on porches.
The cars lay buried by the curbside.
Trees swept underneath the sheets
of ice and snow.
The hedgerows zigzagged,
mounds of whiteness in the empty yards
as tramlines lost their way to work.
And only in the afternoon of sun
did pathways open, house to house.
Young mothers brushed the sidewalks clean
as fathers in their rank cold oily basements
lifted coal into the hoppers.
Gradually children went outside
to wander in the silent bright-lit wonder
that had brought them this:
a shimmering on surfaces that made them strange,
a blanch of empty and uncounted hours.