Snow

It starts out of a grey sky as a half seen notion, just winking on the periphery.  A flake, and then another, tiny crystals dusting the dark wool of my coat.  Softly floating, gentle pricks on my exposed cheeks kiss me with cold excitement.  The piling darkness of the sky gives breath to beauty in little bursts, now swirling in white array around me.  I look up as it falls to catch a point of origin in view, but there is only motion, a rush from everywhere and nowhere in particular.   The stars shed their distant coldness which this way falls in miniature perfection on the earth, a blanket of cold light solidified on the ground.  

To me the snow is romance, grace, an ethereal delight given to transform the landscape into brilliant purity.  Its sparkling silence whispers to me in memory, an image of another time, another life.  The inconveniences of iced over windshields, sodden boots, grimy slush, coarse salt rime, unplowed streets and poorly shoveled sidewalks have long since faded into forgotten distance.  What's left are flurries, the small white clumps softly dancing in the air, the light and lightness, the melting wet on face and tongue, the embracing whiteness, a slip and glide under my skis, a frigid blessedness drifting across the moon.  Living in a snowless land is a choice that leaves me no regrets, just reminiscence, and a mysterious thrill at the chill frill distilled in the clarity of a snowy night.