The Secret Winter

First Snow
I woke up in the guest bedroom, and I glanced around. Rarely can I sleep past 9 AM in an unfamiliar place. I rose to my feet in the close space and moved towards the window. Oh, the sky was falling then, in crystalline perfection: brief, paradisal. The first snow, so that there was still some green to be seen. The evergreens at the edge of the forest dripping with the light frost. I turned where I had seated myself and pulled on my jumper. I went to the kitchen, softly, so as not to wake anyone.

I was standing on the frosty balcony in the early morning, disappointed, disappointed. When everybody wakes up late, the early birds get lonely. "To sleep, perchance to dream." I wish, I wish I could. Dreamless sleeps, I fear, are indicators of a dead spirit. Don't think I'm ready to lie in my sarcophagus quite yet.

So again, the snow. It comes down now, crystalline perfection. Blue-white diamonds glistening in a beautiful sequence of blinding flashes--each a gentle stab, stirring the embers in the fireplace.

Has it really been that long? I want meaning, I want more snow, I want so many things--yes, I am wanting.

Godly morning light. The way that the clouds are torn to shreds by those heavenly rays. Every substance in nature has particle and wave properties, Quantum physics. I doubt you could express my wonderment in terms of science. Still, the snow is water, frozen, so they say. As I feel it fall against me it is only soft.

Soft, soft.

Now, elsewhere I stand waiting against an overwhelming cityscape. My nostalgia is unbearable. I waste here, under these stolid confines. All drab grey, these grimy skyscrapers. They block the beauty of the Sun's lovely rays. One of the few ancient graces we have left, at least until we have patched the sky with cinderblocks. I suppose the day is not so far off now. I hope I'm wrong...foolish, even.

Night, night, night.

River weave. These two rivers cleave sacred earth in twain. Rolling hills, unfathomable canyons. And again, the snow. See it come down. Crystalline perfection; Brief, paradisal; Blue-white diamonds...glistening, faster, fast, fast.
Fast.

You can never match the first snow.