snow

Late December: my father and I

are going to New York, to the circus.

He holds me

on his shoulders in the bitter wind:

scraps of white paper

blow over the railroad ties.

My father liked

to stand like this, to hold me

so he couldn't see me.

I remember

staring straight ahead

into the world my father saw;

I was learning

to absorb its emptiness,

the heavy snow

not falling, whirling around us.