Rain all night, and I was surprised to wake to snow, huge quarter-size sloppy flakes, not really flakes but surreal Dali-esque shapes, somehow stretching, reshaping without quite falling apart, not really falling but seeping from the gray light, and where they touch the pine boughs not a needle moving, slipping onto them and then off, melting as they touch the ground, some glistening for a moment on the fur and feathers of squirrels and birds foraging in the needles, the dove who trusts me enough to turn his back, huddled in my doorway.   And soon it simply suddenly stops, and soon nothing to say it had ever happened.

There are some moments that seem to have existed only because you were there, and if you hadn't seen them you would never know, and perhaps, if one believes in grace and gratitude, given and received, could not have happened without you, and in that moment you know that your life, however brief now nearing seventy years, is beautiful.