The First and the Last Snow

[On a 3 month retreat, I came across this lovely poem. The deep spiritual meaning was clear to me there, in that rarified retreat atmosphere. I hope it will speak to you as well. It is a long poem, and lest I weary those who wish I would not post poetry, clicking the link at the bottom of part one will take you to the final verse. Patricia]

           The Snowstorm

           by Loren Eiseley

‘It is the first and last snows - especially the last -
that blind us most,' Thoreau once said, and I wonder
what he possibly could have been thinking since snow
is always with us and keeps falling
in its proper season,
the generations accepting it without first or last
save perhaps this:
There is a single snow which a child
stores in his memory, the first
snow when he falls in a drift, the first
snow that reveals secrets
like the flake on his sleeve
always to be remembered because it brought
knowledge of crystalline perfection, infinite diversity to be tested
with his own salt tears,
the immeasurable prodigality
of the universal worlds in which we are lost,
the first and blinding snow of childhood.

The Snowstorm, continued