Snow Bees

by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review
Honorable Mention, April 2014
Judged by R.T. Castleberry


Before you died, you became the snow I walked through,
sentinel trees shooing moths and snow bees, just like

the stories I had been raised on, just like the string of pearls
I counted like ivory roses. I wished for the end of winter,

even before that first day. Wrens kept hurling themselves
at the windows, bursting into splinters of wing. If this

were an omen, I said it was because the snow queen wanted
pheasant, tricking the birds with reflected clouds. I apologized

to the air, the clothing of the feathers never fades, a speck
in the eye as the moon peels back its light. How many

broken song birds would satisfy the snow queen? How
many walks through the dripping forest before you became

that crusty wind, the crystals that came down in November,
blinding us all from escaping through the canopy of wings?


another strong poem about that particular poetic conceit—death. --R.T. Castleberry