SNOWFLAKES

Before breakfast I board the bike and wheel
Out to where the snowflakes are so few
You can count them floating into view,
Weightless, coyly choosing where to yield

Their ephemeral beings before the sun moves higher.
Why do they cluster and last on the whitey blowths
Of autumn dandelions or faded roses?
Soon they’re gone. Like most of us they require

A critical mass, the few too scant to make
A life. Remember the single sperm who needs
Adjuvant millions of partners to end as the one seed
In successful assault on the egg. The losers can stake

A moral claim to share the final prize.
Only one set of genes survives.

(66, November 17, 1992)

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