
“Every snowflake has an infinite beauty which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will, in all probability, never find another exactly like it.”
—Wilson Bentley

Beneath a frantic cry
a need for love
is carried on the wind
over a thousand summers
through winter storms of snow and ice,
the moon hums
***
There is no present the man says,
only past and future,
no division between beach and sea,
only water and sand
both existing together.
“In physics there’s no arrow of time.”
In a place beyond our beyond
the past might be the future,
perhaps time existed
before our universe.
My toddler daughter once asked
“Do you remember when I was in your belly
and I hiccupped and that made you laugh?”
A conversation that she no longer remembers,
but that I still do—
that moment in time
frozen—no–
like a movie in my mind—
the improbable (could she have remembered?),
the reality
of mothers and daughters
over and over through time
we’ve moved my mother to a new facility–
she is exhausted,
she is exhausting.
It is an exhausting week.
Time seems to work differently,
dragging, then suddenly gone.
The world is wind and clouds
I am housebound–
by work
not trapped–
but constrained by deadlines
and circumstances
and January grey.

The snowstorm-that-isn’t comes
and goes–
nevertheless, I cook and bake–
comfort food, candles, and wine
while we watch the trapped Icelandic town
caught by weather and geography,
old grievances and new politics.
The world is weary everywhere
trapped by hate,
mired in ignorance.
My daughter says there’s a good musician here,
if you’re not doing anything today?
We’re not
and we go
listen to music, drink some wine–
It’s an afternoon out
but inside—away from the wind—
a moment in time, different,
as each snowflake, and ephemeral
but carrying its unique beauty in our memories
through time
(whatever that may be).

It’s been a strange week with moving mom and cleaning out her old apartment. While driving, we listened to an episode of the Ted Radio Hour, Episode “Shifting Time,” first broadcast in 2015.
We’re watching an Icelandic mystery series called Trapped. We’re almost finished with the first season, and we’re enjoying it.