Thirty-seven Flakes of Falling Snow

© 2004 Sarah Smiles
All rights reserved.

Thirty-seven flakes of falling snow, a white moment and a red scar
for each life that has flowed into this frozen embrace.

The moment, where the world is illuminated by that strange silence
that comes with the winter frosts;
a silence in which everything is heard.
Each step, soft footfall, noiseless. Only felt.

Each unseen movement carries
this black shawled, white shrouded form.
Each movement brings a quiet compression
of space and time.

The distance between people: the smallest instance,
without even a hush to break it, has no room for memory.
No admission or allowance made for any future
but the grave, beyond each step of the present.

Motion without movement; reflections without memory;
future and past encoded in a fatal touch that steals
life, yet reveals nothing in the end.

And each step, calling, mourning, desiring,
a terminal passing of passion and regret.

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