Snowbound

Ever so briefly - did it really
happen? the pewter curtain
of the sky parted and the sun
darted into the breach, illuminating
the dreary day and the wide river
roiled and steely grey, whitecaps
telling tales of the rapids beyond
winter-frozen banks, the broad
sweep of ice, its winter-portable
fishing huts, the view as of a
19th-Century colony posed
on the far shore, soft white
columns of exhaust rising from
industrial chimneys, then the
curtain abruptly as it parted,
closing, clusters of densely packed
snow winking their voyage from
sky to land, muffling sound and
form in humped white beaches
swaddling the landscape.