Winner of the Kansas Poetry Month contest, week two: snow and ice (professional category)
At long last you are in
the blizzard behind glass,
this trail of flakes your cape
of disappearance.
Dogs romp on the path.
Skaters twirl on the lake.
Under the ice, life
swirls. The yellow chapel
is forever framed by evergreens
and at the end of the pathway
the scene starts over:
The skaters are still
turning, it is still snowing,
turning and snowing.
Moving from solid to scattered
effervescent to evanescent
takes a lifetime.
Everything is nothing
if you look long enough.
— Wyatt Townley
Wyatt Townley is a fourth-generation Kansan. This poem is from her new collection, The Afterlives of Trees (Woodley), which she won a Master Fellowship from the Kansas Arts Commission to complete. Other books of poems include The Breathing Field (Little, Brown) and Perfectly Normal (The Smith). Her work has appeared in journals ranging from The Paris Review to Newsweek.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 
I’m most intrigued by the subject of the poem, the magical, mystical snow globe that never seems to lose its appeal from one generation to the next. Kudos to the author for her creativity.