1
It is silent forever in this new world,
calm, and falling whitely.
I am the slow falling,
dropping, dropping.
Breaking up the sky,
I become its length and breadth,
the unmarked thickness across the windshield,
and evenhanded emptiness
breathing in like the baby asleep in the new ship
of its untried body, breathing out in the shape
of a snow-driven man, still sailing
the white drifts of his own quiet breaking.

2
Snow’s depth is the instant shape
it gives a thing: what snow touches shifts,
just slightly, bringing the sweet pleasure
of merest change,
the way a human will touch a human
lightly on the wrist and that day
is different, slightly and forever.
Like snow, I was born
in the distant belly of a mother
I never knew as well as when,
point by lovely point,
I was forming myself inside her.
I came from nowhere,
fell softly on new air.
I did not know where the drift of weather
or the iron tide of chance would carry me.
I fell far beyond my own control,
giddy with release.
I was most myself
in this my only falling
onto our earth.