Snowflakes connect NetFriends to each other.
On Christmas Eve I stood in church
I listened to the choir ring
The birth of a child,
But harsh, not mild,
and somehow uninspiring.
So at midnight I stepped out
and looked up in the sky
And watched the snow fall down
like some starfield sweeping by.
The clouds were dark and low…
where a snowflake burst assunder
A dozen points did spring
to be scattered o’er the earth
By thunder born before the wing
of a butterfly in Perth.
One fluttered down in Canada
where western mountains hide a vale
Two landed in Chicago
midst a howling winter gale.
One alit in sweet Missouri,
near an icy river.
Several in New Hampshire
where the cold will make you shiver
One fell near a College Park
By proud Potomac strands
One across the ocean flew
to winter Netherlands
And one fell here into the church yard
where my imagination froze
It fluttered once before my eyes,
Then landed on my nose.
—g from a life long ago and far away.