Low Country Snow

I never shall know
while I live, what it meant. . . .
the narrow lane
and the album scent
of jessamine in a world of snow
where neither leaf nor bud should grow.
I shall not live to find again
one half so redolent of pain,
one half so heartening a thing
as this contracted breath of spring—
this smell, a whispered sigh in air,
and the lush white bloom nowhere, nowhere.