Sitting, slumped in my chair, I can see the wet, heavy spring snow falling outside. Snow. At seventy degrees it was 2:00 and I walked to work in a t-shirt. At fifty degrees it was darkening and the four of us went out for a walk. At dark, the rain started to fall. At forty-five degrees, we found our way back to the Quad, exulting in the rain and lamenting the abused and battered wife-to-be of every Ben Untereiner.
Five hours later, the rain gave up its gentle fall from the heavens. Five hours. Each rain drop’s decent from the vast, clouded window to the stars. To the roofs below– broken shingles on soggy wood. Each striving to be swept into the gutter, awash with a million identical once-individual drops of rain, who all have no succumbed to gravity’s dictate: down! down! everyone all together!
But no– now snow. Wet, clumsy flakes. Their resistance is more visible and their end less fulfilling. Each is begrudgingly pulled to the brown each below– each so volatile as to disappear at the earth’s briefest touch, leaving only a cold, wet smear where once there was a snowflake. And on and on and on and on ad infinitum until the heavens abandon their assualt on the ground outside the window where I sit, slumped. They must find some other ground to die on.
