Like snow, I was born in the distant belly of a mother I never knew as well as when, point by lovely point, I was forming myself inside her. I came from nowhere, fell softly on new air. I did not know where the drift of weather or the iron tide of chance would carry me. I fell far beyond my own control, giddy with release. I was most myself in this my only falling onto our earth.

Snow's depth is the instant shape it gives a thing: what snow touches shifts, just slightly, bringing the sweet pleasure of merest change, the way a human will touch a human lightly on the wrist and that day is different, slightly and forever:

I am one among many, our lives linked, as drifting snow is linked, in mutual need and fallen beauty.