Your Near Immortal Beard You are old and winter is here. You can feel it in your bones-- the future surrounding you, streaming from battlements of drift around the yard. I watch you watching snow and wonder, are you willing to surrender?--willing to go to the place where all go, where I'll go, but not, I think, go willingly. Now and then, when you grow quiet, I feel that you have lost me. I watch you in the morning, scraping, scraping at your near immortal beard, and think, how easily you fit your life, never use a saucer, never lose the butter from the knife. I watch you at the window and wonder what you wonder when you watch the snowbirds burning into wing. Are you thinking how the snow gathers before our eyes and keeps on falling all night, unseen, surrounding the trees in rings? Are you thinking how it gathers on this hill, and over the next hill, and shines like light in space forever? I watch you watching snow and wonder, does it fill you up with water? Do you feel yourself begin to flow away? I watch you don another sweater and stoke the stove, poke the logs and deftly lay the fire right. I wonder if you're thinking how the snow sifts down like resin from the bow when you play the Blauedonauwalz. I watch you watching snow as it thickens into blizzard, sticks, melts and slithers down the glass. I watch you at the window and wonder what you wonder when you cool a leather cheek against the weather-beaten sash. © Dale R. Hobson. All rights reserved.