Snow Falls Through Lamplight

When caught descending, it hesitates
Acquiring an impossible stillness;
Before the wind’s weight drives it on
Out of light, down to this unlit earth.

Snow is born in a higher darkness,
You shape it in perfect blindness;
Holding it in the womb of your silence
Until it breaks past the border of light.

Exposed, we see ourselves, but in part:
Imperfectly caught in history’s radiance.
And then only for the span of a breath.
For when you pull time’s lightness down,

We cannot begin to resist that weight.
Not quite light enough, our frailty
Hangs back, defiant, in the wind
Or some collusion of circumstance

Until suffering compels it to reveal...
No, not to this passing stranger, who
Hurrying home, pauses by a street lamp.
He’s yet too early to receive that vision.

But even he, if he closes his eyes, can
Imagine uncountable faces gathered
In drifts across the silence of your earth
All still, all listening, as eternal day breaks over.