It never stops

For days snow has been falling lightly, enough to soften the ground and everything that rises up. The shape of what falls changes, sometimes small dandelion bundles of interlocked flakes, sometimes bigger rags of discarded gauze, sometimes not snow at all but glimmering crystals floating in sunlight. Out one window they are a cloud. Out another through slats of blinds they are bobbing flames, or moths drawn to flames. Like news items they never stop arriving, no two exactly alike. You could never begin to pay attention to each one, but the ones that fall on your coat or the cat are enough to fill the mind with their pellucid spokes and crosses visible to the naked eye.

I can’t tell if birds are distressed by so much litter in the air. Cardinals, blue jays, juncos and chickadees drop and rise in steady repetition to the seeds on the ground, like the cycle of water that starts in the ocean, rises to the atmosphere and falls again to earth. They must be quick, to keep after the seeds, which are continually being covered over by white. After thirty minutes of this cycle the birds are gone. Guards of bamboo wait, leaves hanging down like fingers in white gloves. Now that the birds have fled to their nubby perches invisible to me, there is no focus in the falling snow. Seeds lie scattered and still under white felt, invisible. Maybe the birds will return in an hour. Should I throw more seed? Shall I call them back to show me how to sift through the confetti of this parade and get at the point of the world?