POMEGRANATE, POMEGRANATE

Tonight there's a soft feathery snow that's falling light as goose down . . . it makes the trees look as if they've been spritzed with fake Christmas tree snow (it's that frothy and sparkly), and covers the ground in white puffy fluffs like a head of whipped cream melting into black cappuccino. The cats have been alternately quarrelling over the choicest Heat Vents and Hugging Each Other on the Futon to stay warm.

All day long yesterday the trees simultaneously released entire branchfuls of leaves with exasperated sighs, and they came clattering down like breakfast cereal. How does it feel, I wonder, to relinquish oneself to winter in this way? And is it actually the trees that release their leaves, or the leaves that simply decide to let go?

I found a remnant of summer in the mop bucket . . . a perfectly preserved specimen of a Dog Day Cicada, in army-tank greens and blacks, with a glitterwing fretwork of laced wings, and two hind legs raised akimbo as if frozen in mid-stride. Also, a strange, Unidentified Insect that looks somewhat like an Albino Bee, or a Mutant Fly from the island of Dr. Moreau.

All night long, softly rhyming words falling down with the snow: hegemony, anemone, chalcedony, Persephone.

I bought a pair of pomegranates at the Hy-Vee yesterday. So beautiful and self-contained, with their lovely flowered crowns . . . mysteriously hiding their garnet-colored glistening seeds nested in egg-carton dimples of pulp inside. It is thought that Eve may have been tempted by the pomegranate, and not the apple. I wish I had an entire basket of pomegranates. I would love to stand on the sidewalk and press them one by one into the open palms of beautiful women, saying . . . remember.