The first time he saw snow, he walked

            from the worksite all the way to the housing,
the road choking with snirt, the headlights 
                        sweeping the lonely landscape, the polycrystals

glinting before going dark. Starless and cold, 
            the sky opened up with snowburst.
He was tired yet his body, as if of its own accord, 
                        glided across

                                    the white scene, the wonder of it all
a magnet that pulled his mind out of itself, and into the heart
            of every snowflake that fell. The world stood
still. And he regarded the stillness with the awe

                        of a boy growing
up in the valley of his now distant country. Life then, there,

was slow, like a river deep in summer.  
In Kurosawa’s Dreams, a boy had stumbled on a slow wedding procession

of fox spirits, each step a ceremony, every 
            move of the body a ritual in serenity. 
In Niigata when the evening snow gathered

            on the invisible ground, his heart went after
every wintry powder that drifted

                                                in the wind,
his self unable to contain the bliss
                                    he thought he could not have.  
There was no time that time in Niigata—just a worker
            discovering his happiness.