It Gathers Us In

I felt it

in this whiteness –

a    b  r  e  a  t  h  i  n  g    s  p  a  c  e.

* * *

This silence at my disposal – a deliberate ploy intended, perhaps, to slow me down, that I might instigate a conversation or a poem at least, midst this dominance of snow – flakes accumulating as they descend from the sky of the world, each intricately sculpted like an exquisite work of art. Contemplating its beauty, in thick white tones the snow continues its fall, creating a deep layer blanketing the earth like a soft white feathered duvet, partially obscuring an indefinite number of things tucked in beneath it.

* * *

Any great work of art…revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success

is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which

it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

– Leonard Bernstein