If you have seen the snow somewhere slowly fall on a bicycle, then you understand all beauty will be lost and that even loss can be beautiful. And if you have looked at a winter garden and seen not a winter garden but a meditation on shape, then you understand why this season is not known for its words, the cold too much about the slowing of matter, not enough about the making of it. So you are blessed to forget this way: jump rope in the ice melt, a mitten that has lost its hand, a sun that shines as if it doesn’t mean it. And if in another season you see a beautiful woman use her bare hands to smooth wrinkles from her expensive dress for the sake of dignity, but in so doing reveal the outlines of her thighs, then you will remember surprise assumes a space that has first been forgotten, especially here, where we rarely speak of it, where we walk out onto the roofs of frozen lakes simply because we’re stunned we really can.
From Polar, Alice James Books, 2005. Used with permission.