Late December: my father and I <br />are going to New York, to the circus. <br />He holds me <br />on his shoulders in the bitter wind: <br />scraps of white paper <br />blow over the railroad ties. <br /> <br />My father liked <br />to stand like this, to hold me <br />so he couldn't see me. <br />I remember <br />staring straight ahead <br />into the world my father saw; <br />I was learning <br />to absorb its emptiness, <br />the heavy snow <br />not falling, whirling around us.<br /><br />Louise Glück<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/snow-18/