I stand at the window and I watch the snow. It's falling in big, fluffy flakes. They've covered my entire world with a sort of fairy dust.
I'd forgotten everything about snow, except its whiteness. I'd forgotten how soft and cold it felt on my face, the squeaking crunch of it under my boots. And I'd forgotten the sound of its falling - like the crystallized voices of long ago librarians all whispering "shh" to long dead children.
I had a visitor yesterday, an old, old friend. Like me, he is taking 'a walk through the woods'. We sat by the fire and talked of the past and of the present. The future was best left unsaid.
After a long silence, I had to ask:
"What do you miss most of all?"
He sighed.
"I miss the arguing, all those days when we lived on words and threw ideas around like so many paper planes. I miss trying to mold someone's thoughts and finding my own changed by an interpretation I'd never dreamed existed. No one argues with me now."
I laughed until I cried.
"I don't think you're old enough to be considered a god. Surely, they argue with you."
"They don't argue. They just repeat words and phrases they've heard someone else say. Our arguments were like bonfires we built and everyone came to see, some with sticks of wood and some with buckets of water. And sometimes the wood became water, and the water,wood. But the ideas! We built such blazes!'
"And now?"
A tear rolled down his cheek.
"Now the fires are like--what is the phrase I'm searching for? It's right on the tip of my tongue."
"Like a 'quiet red or burned-out fire'", I teased.
Surprisingly, he buried his face in his hands.
"How could I have forgotten those words? How could I have forgotten Charlotte Mew? How could I have forgotten the poem that gave us birth?"