"A Snowy Night" - Day 87 of 365

This post is for Thursday December 23,2010

MEMORY -

December 23, 1995 .... Pete created his gift from the heart for our family.  A poem dedicated to his mother the month she passed away.

" A Snowy Night" By Peter DeLuca

A young girl walks home one evening.
It's been snowing, more or less, all day long, but now the snow come like a white waterfall.
The flakes large and wet, dancing through the cold night air.
Tumbling, twirling, catching the moonlight as they fall.
Touching everything, covering the grass, the sidewalk, the front steps.
Blanketing the street, quieting the night noises.

It's unusually quiet .... like putting your ears into a warm, white pillow in a cold bed and listening to your thoughts get louder and louder.
The world has gone white .....
The snow, the moon, the streetlights all blur into one winter white.

The absence of color is barley noticed.
It is as though there is only one color, everything else is unnecessary.
The snow amplifies quiet, and diminishes confusion.
Each flake, like each person is individually complicated, unique and never to be duplicated.
But when millions fall to the earth in an hour, they surrender their complexity to leave one lasting impression.

An impression so powerful, so moving, it might last a lifetime.
It embeds itself into the memory.
It burrows into the unconscious.
It penetrates into the heart ... where it finds a welcome home and soon becomes a friend.

Life plays with us.
It tempts us with things.
It seduces us with self-importance.
It convinces us that we are invincible.
It makes a great noise of itself ... and then we need the snow quiet and then we need the old friend.

The young girl becomes a new bride
A new mother
A new grandmother
and finally ..... an old woman.

The light begins to fail, the world becomes confusion.
The strong legs that once walked in the quiet deep snow... weaken
But the heart memory grows younger, stronger, more real than reality.

And in the end, the world grows simpler and quieter once more.
Forever .....

APPLICATION -

This evening, surrounded by warm glowing Christmas lights, I read his labor of love ........ I'm celebrating inside to know that mother and son are together again this Christmas and like Pete stated in his poem ... they are younger, stronger and more real than reality.  Their world is simple and quiet once more ...... forever.

REFLECTION -

My spirit looks forward to the day we are all together, once again feeling the joy of Christmas for the rest of eternity.