New Snow

James Zoller It has begun to snow again Dime-sized white flakes filling the air as if they were swirling in the dense water of a snow globe The plow scrapes past with its circling amber light and its blade that curls the snow back on itself like revolving seasons I sit at my table by the window at the threshold of a new century at the doorsill of a new millennium expecting to write about myself and my times expecting somehow a rush of ideas and voices Finally, we take our lives and lay them out before us taking whatever tools we have – paints, gestures, words table knife or scalpel – we begin to cut Now the snow has tapered off, the temperature drops. No one is on the street, no sounds sift through the air. This might be at the end of time, the end of the world But something tells me – reason, habit, memory faith – that life must continue, that I have a tool somewhere to stanch the bleeding ~~~~~ Next: The Natural Order of Things