Birthday Postcard
Kevin Casey

With the first full week of May behind us,
the air is thick and drowsy with vapor
at two-thousand feet. A final drift of snow
glimmers in the noon sun—a winter shipwreck
lodged behind a spruce-topped ridge.

Crouching on the granite, I form three spheres
from this arch of snow grown rough and littered
with balsam chaff, and give the foot-tall snowman
a hat of moss, raise a twig arm in greeting.

Texting you a photo of this small golem,
I think of you another year older,
smiling at your little brother who seeks
these isolating heights to give shape
and voice to a divided soul, and his stunted
effigy, waving from his mountain
to your whole and generous spirit
wandering among the fragrant dogwood
somewhere in your warm and distant valley.

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