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A Quiet Place
Snow falling
outside the window -
Shall I invite it in?
"Snow" Snow can be snow. Snow was snow when I wrote the verse, sitting in my recliner, looking at snowflakes sailing through the sky. However, snow can be what you want it to be. It is all there. You choose. You do. You have chosen for many years. You are the creation of all those choices, one... two... three ...
"Falling" Snow falls, and everything is falling. Everything moves. Nothing stays in the sky, and nothing stays anywhere. Snowflakes are born and die - or appear to: looking one way, birth-and-death; looking the other way, no-birth-and-no death.
Snowflakes are each unique, a piece of the entire universe in ephemeral disguise.
Snow melts. Snow ascends, and descends again. Snow becomes trees, clouds, rivers, lakes, oceans, words, faces, and the water you drink. Could it be you and the window are made of snowflakes?
"Outside the window" There are many kinds of windows, some inside and some outside us. If so, can a window keep snowflakes out? Does the distance have to remain? Can snowflakes come inside, while they keep falling outside?
"Shall I invite it in?"
As long as we are in the world we live in, windows will remain - inside and outside, seen and unseen. You, I, and snowflakes will remain, in some sense, even after someone reads our obituary.
Yes, there is a way for snowflakes to come in without them falling on the floor. They will not, however, come in unless invited. "Do you want them to get that close to you?" Or, "Do you want them to remain on the other side of a window?"
If you invite the falling snow inside, you invite yourself out, which is to say, no-inside and no-outside - such is the closeness. In and out open both ways. There is one door. To invite is to be invited. Do you hear the echo of your invitation?
Again, however, do you want such closeness? We all do, do we not? Then, why do windows keep us apart? Windows can keep us apart, or they can bring us together.
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(C) brian wilcox, 2026
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