first snow

silver grey haze
that glazes
the end of september
winter
strikes early
with a rain of snowflakes
a half inch has not
melted
from the unsprung birches
and the shivering spruce
whose branches
rattle
in the southwest wind
the storms have blown in
from the bering sea
permeating
our autumn
with a graveness, a gravity
the season has yet to change