Snow is a miracle that touches a deep silence in me, a silence I cannot speak of well – words seem wanting. And still I try, as many of us continue doing in various ways.
We may share the banter of our lives, our witty observations, our advice, our humour, our existential pain, or we may reach out with a warm hand of reconciliation. I do all these things, at times, but underlying my often competing voices, I tend to channel my experiences into the roaming eye of future becoming. If friends misread me, I like to console myself with this Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote –
‘Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.’
Each one of us has unique perceptions, and there is enormous inspiration and joy in our differences.
So much for the still sphere snow touches in me. The other miracle about snow is that it draws my attention to the surreal nature of reality, highly sensuous, yet stripped of bright colours and removed from habitual seeing – to the bones of shapes, to deeper gestures and essences. For me, a snow-covered scene is a metaphor of restraint that slows down or speeds up time to alien levels of dimension. It occasions one of those time-independent spheres, where I make pattern-connections and create new meaning.
A simple poem follows my thoughts on the miracle of snow. I tried to limit myself to 5/7/5 Haiku count, and hope it delights:
in silvery vaults
an angel ruffles her wings –
a leisurely shrug –
the sparkle begins –
slipping from her hand as a
powdery shower
of crystalline downs –
feathery light on the silence
hidden between breaths –
fine gauze swirls and drifts
across the tired features
of a dreaming land
to drape every
plane and angular slope in
white geometry
My appreciation for the geometry of life resonates with my love for black & white photography, see two posts back:
https://courseofmirrors.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/the-inner-silence-of-henri-cartier-bresson/
There are other pleasures to be had from snow, as my enthusiastic and capable son demonstrated in 1982 Somerset, and as the adorable puppy of a friend of mine discovered in Dorset yesterday.
Course of Mirrors 