After a Snow

Last night I fell asleep
while the snow hurried down
with silent urgency.

This morning, the urgency
is gone.
And the world is new and

beautiful.

Blue-white in the early light.

Snow lies precariously
on the thin branches.
Temporarily breathtaking.
The way we rest
on a slender
hope, finding refuge
from a world of too many possibilities.

At any moment
we may be displaced
by a waft of air or
fortune.
And yet in the pulse
of our lives,
the tiny invisible molecules
working, working,
the chemical flash of our neurons,
the constant expanding and refolding
of coils of unimaginable information,
we remember that our existence
depends on change.

And if we are dislodged from hope,
if we are blown about by despair,
the shift of time and atoms and seasons
reminds us:

The world will be made new.
The world will be made new.
The world will be made new.

Whether by water or flowers or fire,
or a sudden shift
in perspective.

So we cling to our
thin hopes,
and if we are lucky
we remember that the next moment
may look different from this one,
whether we wait and see
or leap forth
into the Unknown,
hoping to find out
what happens next.