Waking beneath a blanket of gray cloud feels somehow
reassuring, feels like a soft beginning to a hard year, feels less
harsh than bright sunlight bearing down like an interrogation lamp,
demanding answers to questions that can't possibly be answered.
Somehow reassuring also that the clouds are entirely indifferent
to the plight of those below, indifferent to mortality itself
and the realization that the old must die, and soon, and that memory
is all that will remain until memory dies as well at last.
Snow falls in the afternoon gently here and maybe everywhere
between here and Ohio, where memories continue to live and die,
where sky and frozen ground become covered by the same dull
exquisite softness of time as it turns, descends, and turns away.
©2025 Jim Magaw
