Es schneit kinder-winter-wunschflocken: dick und schwer und langsam und ergiebig. Ich sitze im warmen und gucke zu. Passend dazu hatte ich ein wunderbares textchen in der mailbox von thomas trofimuk, einem edmontoner poeten, dessen woechentliches „sorbet“ ich abonniert habe. Leider nur fuer die englischsprachigen unter euch:

if it snows

Wake me if it snows.

Always. If it is snowing and you are up and I am sleeping, wake me, please.

Bring me back from sleep. Because when it snows, something is protected. Loneliness is evened out. Heartache is patted down. The patterns of life are quietly disrupted. And the world is made new.

Wake me if it snows.

Always. Make tea. Or pour a scotch. Or open a bottle of wine. Pull up the comfortable chairs to the window and we will sit together in the dark and watch the snow fall. If you are cold, there is a soft and heavy blanket there in the blanket box. Or we can make a fire. Maybe we’ll light a candle across the room – let its shadows dart and fret against the blue wall. We can sit together and talk about the skeleton of a jaguar they found in the Yukon, or the hazy image of a massive planet one hundred and seventy light years away, or the idea of morality without God. Maybe you’ll tell me a story from when you were a girl. They didn’t call it bullying back then. They didn’t have a name for it. Maybe it was just cruelty. Maybe they used words like “hysterical” or lines like – “she’s so sensitive.” You might look up and nod and say: “nobody gets here without damage” and then you will carry on. You will be so nonchalant about this. It will neither diminish, nor underscore the damage. When you are finished your telling, I will love you again. I will be hopelessly in love with the woman who grew from that girl. To look into your eyes will be as if I am lost and found and suddenly angled in the world. It will frighten me a little to look there, but I will want to look because I will have rediscovered the gentle heart of you. And the whole while, it will be snowing. Maybe you will reach across the space between us – slip your hand into mine – and we will become silent, watch the snow as it dots the darkness. This soft brush that paints the night with white. We will not care what the time is. We will not mind getting up tired. You will sip your tea and smile. And still, the snow will be falling.