It takes approximately two hours for a snowflake to fall from a cloud to the ground.
—The Book of Trivia
In the roughly two hours
it takes for a snowflake
to fall from a cloud to the ground,
we managed to get back to the house,
bang the snow off our boots,
shake out our coats in the mudroom,
then stoke the stove back to life,
open a bottle of wine—
I think it was a red from Oregon—
heat the white bean soup from last night,
which we spooned up
sitting close to the splintering stove,
after which we carried our bowls
to the kitchen and opened
an inlaid wooden box full of chips
and fanned out a fresh deck of playing cards,
which you shuffled and I cut,
as the house was warming up,
and you tossed in a modest bet
with a red Jack showing
and I saw you with my nine
just as that singular snowflake
landed without a sound
in the general darkness of Vermont.