December 30: Frankie, Ravi Shankar, "Snowfall"

I am sitting in McDonald's at the moment, looking out of the long wall of windows, waiting for the snow to start.  I think they're calling this storm Frankie, which, to me, sounds like a character in a 1930s James Cagney gangster film:  "Wait 'til Frankie shows up, see.  Frankie will set you straight, you dirty rat."

I am not excited about dealing with a huge snow.  It just complicates my day and my plans.  However, I have chosen to live in an area of the country where snow and cold basically controls your life for about seven months of the year, if you're lucky.  Eight months, if you're unlucky.

So, I am thankful that, at the moment, the sky is blue, and the wind is nonexistent.

Saint Marty is on vacation and ready to relax a little bit this New Year's weekend.

Snowfall

by:  Ravi Shankar

Particulate as ash, new year's first snow falls

upon peaked roofs, car hoods, undulant hills,

in imitation of motion that moves the way

static cascades down screens when the cable

zaps out, persistent & granular with a flicker

of legibility that dissipates before it can be

interpolated into any succession of imagery.

One hour stretches sixty minutes into a field

of white flurry: hexagonal lattices of water

molecules that accumulate in drifts too soon

strewn with sand, hewn into browning

mounds by plow blade, left to turn to slush.