The walking man studies the footprints he’s made in the first snow of this year, footprints meandering back through time, back through time with his thoughts. There he finds a boy playing by a stream, happy as youth can be. He walks over and says, “Hello.” The boy doesn’t hear. He wants to say, “Remember this,” but all he can do is watch for a while as the child works his way along the bank, disappearing around the bend.
His thoughts lead back to a grassy field where a young man tosses hay bales onto a wagon. The man in the snow wants to shout, “Be careful,” but again can only watch as the farm cart passes by. He knows the young man has no reason to listen to the wind. Turning up his collar, he shrugs away the cold.
Blowing snow covers his tracks. He watches them fade into gray twilight. Searching for even a hint of her, her footprints in the snow, he wants to tell her, “I’m sorry,” but her footprints are no longert there. The trail’s gone cold, and he’s walking alone on his way back home in a blizzard.
recollections . . .
layers of settling dust
on the bookshelves
begin to obscure
the stories
First published in Atlas Poetica