Snow and Its Sound
Snow falls the way a bow first touches a string.
No sound yet, announcing a melody of a solo.
The street forgets its name,
Windows hold their breath,
Each flake arrives,
as if it has been rehearsing for this moment
a long anticipating while.
The sound then came, a cello.
The tree remembers forests,
Resin remembers its sap.
And the low note opens
a door I didn’t quite know
there.
The sound does not travel forward,
It sinks.
Into floors,
Into books,
Into the long winter
stored behind the heart.
Falling snow keeps time without counting.
The cello refuses to hurry.
Silence thickens between the notes,
holding what the sound cannot carry.
Each pause listens harder,
than the music itself,
as if afraid the cello might stop
before it has finished
Memories.
Silence is not empty.
It is padded,
white,
listening.
The notes are keeping falling
When the bow lifts,
Each stroke melts a little silence
until the snow stops,
snowflakes hanging
on every house’s windows.
Nothing ends.
It only settles.
