TODAY IS A DAY UNLIKE ALL OTHERS

I awoke this morning to snow.  Even though my village is a mile high, it had not snowed here since 1977. But this morning we drank morning coffee watching quarter-sized flakes drift toward the earth. Children here have no winter clothes and yet they were outside watching the first snow of their lives. Dogs nipped at the flakes in confusion and the elders thought of the phenomena as an omen.

“This is not as God intended,” observed the elder.

“This is where spring lives forever,” he concluded.

“Do you not find this strange?”

I can think of no prophesy to tell him.

I am a poet, not a seer or evangelist.

I can neither see the shape of tomorrow in tea leaves

Nor read prophetically between the lines of a dream.

 

Do not seek wisdom in my words, kind sir

I am as you �" as uncertain as you �" thwarted, amazed,

As evil and good as you or perhaps neither good or evil.

My fears are your fears �" of want and loneliness

Of an unknown tomorrow.

I only seek refuge from the world I knew

Of hate often taught, intolerance bequeathed and legislated.

 

We share this world of eternal spring.

My needs are your needs, old needs of bread and love,

Of work, peace, room to grow, time to think

And long years to live.

I am not your seer for I fail where you fail

I seek what you would find
and I question what you have answered long ago.

 

I marvel at our whitened world

I see within it my conscience and lost memories

No longer do I keep piety on my lips

And science shining in my eyes.

I am at home and lift my eyes

To the cascading flakes

And know each one bears its message.

Reviews

[Sara Mercury]

I like this. Just accept things as they are without trying to explain them. Cool.

I wish it would snow here in Illinois. I left Florida with the thought that, hey... I'm going up north to Illinois where it snows for Christmas. I've seen only ONE white Christmas since I've been here - my first one in 2013, and not since, though it's snowed every winter - except for this year...