It is snowing.

[Josiah Jacobus-Parker]

So, after hearing about it all on the news and reading about it here ----> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/nyregion...ei=5070&emc=eta I got all nostalgic and wistful about the snow and started writing a poem about it. The whole thing sort of took off from there and became a little more self-reflective than I had meant it to be... tell me what you think!

It is snowing.

I see it flurrying down at a sharp angle,

Bigger and bigger pieces

Light as feathers

Alternating between swirls of fanciful misdirection

And bulleting down on a kamikaze mission towards earth.

I see from my six-foot windows

It?s piling on the roof of the building below me,

And the cars iced to the parking lot,

Trashcans frozen shut.

At my very core I am warm,

But on my edge there is a blueness:

My fingers and toes are as chilled

As they might be were I out there.

Just imagining the flakes dampening my hair,

Sprinkling my coat,

Dusting my eyelashes gives me a childish joy

That nearly erases the rest of what I feel.

I want to go out there in it today,

So I might grab some books and walk to the library to read.

It is Sunday, and I have things I must write,

But I am not sure I have the energy at the moment.

If it weren't for the snow to motivate me

I'd not have the energy to leave my bed at all.

I hope I see no one familiar except strangers

I've previously run in to today,

Ones I've never spoken to but know well,

But only as well as that.

If I saw someone whom I have spoken with,

Or a friend,

I'll be trapped in that conversation

And hello's and good-bye's

And pretending that I only look so angry out of habit

Rather than because I always actually am,

Don?t worry,

I'm fine,

And my eyes are only sunken because I have not slept well

As opposed to being because my calorie intake is low

And I am ill with a mystery illness,

One that plagues me tauntingly,

Hardly,

Off and on as if it could not decide

If it should manifest enough to give me proof,

And a disease of the heart.

I wonder,

If I were stranded on an island

With only salt water within reach

Would my thirst be emphasized?

Would not having it at my disposal

Make it that more irrevocably present

And impossible to ignore?

I say this because I am thirsty now

And seem to have not drunk a thing in over a day,

But I am lazy and have yet to find it in me

To get up and make myself a glass of water

--I'm too busy staring at the snow.

Perhaps only it can quench this anyway.