Remembering the moist heavy color of the water

The steamy ~posttchhh~~as each flake hit.

My daughter looking back as she accidentally ripped

A paddle from a wave.

Frail flakes of snow on her shoulders and in her hair.

 

A brief moment of panic~~

What was that about?

 

Now, seeping in the silence of the lake,

How cold

 the sky reached down

as I watched

the crosswalk rush

of white crystalline death to the warm

belly below.

 

I have heard these flakes are crystals,

each one a pretty poem softly dissolving unseen,

flung to earth from gifted clouds.

 

They fall in an endless density,

each one unique--

some more than others--

eager, open-mouhed,

swallowing the dark water.

 

I am thinking about the sound,

the paddle dipping,

dripping,

the slow cold thud against the side. 

 

I am thinking

about the clarity and the depth

to which a snowflake

suddenly denied…

after burning through the cold skin

on its way to the heat of the earth.

 

I am considering the distance across the lake

barely seen through this cloud of fallen forms,

an infinity of poems and

perhaps

daughters

falling over slippery generations

each one unique as any other.