just snow

There is snow, then ice, which makes for heavy and tedious shoveling of a not-short driveway.  The saving grace is the four of us, shoveling in unison.  The air is crisp and cold but our bodies are warm and we are strong, especially together.

I am keenly aware of opposites this week.  The cold, the warm.  The wakefulness, the sleep.  The nerves, the peace.  Sometimes I feel one following the other, sometimes they coexist.  I know this awareness is me opening, unfurling, cracking, putting toes in the water.  There isn’t more to say than that.  I am at the water’s edge, contemplating a swim.

We come together.  We write, we breathe, we vision, we write more.  There are words of refraction, words of seagrass and marshes and trees, words of stillness, words tender and kept close to the heart.  It is all I hope it to be, maybe more.  I am at the edge of something.  They are too.  I think how strong we all are, especially together.

I look out my window at a patch of ground.  I cannot tell if it is the whitest of snow or some hole the sun has burnt through to some otherworldly realm.  It glows, I can barely look at it for all its intensity.  And then, just like that, a cloud passes over the sun and I see clearly that it is, in fact, just snow.  Just snow, as if it is some small matter, millions upon millions of unique flakes pressing together.  I think how snow is no small matter, how it weaves impressions and stories and preferences, all of varying complexity, depending.

Just snow.  Just words.  Just opposites.  Just the four of us.
All of that, together.  My goodness, that’s quite a week.

Come dress yourself in love, let the journey begin.
~ Francesca da Rimini ~