April 2nd: Running Downhill

I love the way in which snow,
falling gently to the earth, will sometimes
uplift on a warm draft of air, if only
for a moment before continuing down
to the ground; but I hate when she,
normally so demanding and
controlling, cannot make up her mind,
and she, like that same snowfall,
drifts up, then down, oscillating between
decisions which revisions will reverse. I think
it is because the snow, poor thing,
is damned to fall. It cannot reverse
its direction the way a human
may, but is always locked in,
heat-seeking the ground or
the skin we left bare or perhaps
your uncapped hair (you should
really wear that woolen hat
your grandmother knitted for you, she
spent all week getting it right, and
Lord knows you’ll catch your
death of cold. I can see that your
ears are freezing).
She is making the most of
her life, I suppose, moving
laterally between two points
in space, each equally attractive,
each with its own reality to follow -
but in so doing, she wastes the
precious time which we are given,
hanging in that moment, biting
her lip and looking to us
for answers. Unlike the snow, our
indecision, turning fearfully to look
back at the choices we’ve made,
hovering in the sky before we
land with a bone-shattering smack
on the cold concrete - indecision
cannot save us some time
or spare us some momentum as
we plummet to that inevitable
end that pelts the soil with
our bodies, layering us up
like hours of cold snow. Time keeps
pushing us down, even if
we’re looking sideways.