a moment in the day: mane

I walk Nicholas in the Portland snow. When I woke up, it was fairy tale snow with big confetti flakes, but now it's just a shaker of salt. Snow used to be another of the games I played. Snow was a contract with a circus we wanted to work for or a favorable letter in the mail from a literary agent or a promise that, if that letter in the mail was just another of those tiny pre-printed slips, at least sometime in the future what I wanted was going to happen.

It was an easy game, because at the time I lived in Wisconsin.

I've been trying lately to wash all of those games out of my head, but when I saw the snow, first thing this morning, I had to stop myself and remind myself that snow is snow is snow.

Nicholas doesn't think anything of the bits of ice falling from the sky, just walks down the sidewalk, sniffing. The streets are wet. The only place the snow is sticking is in the black mane of the tiny toy horse tied to the hitching ring at the edge of the sidewalk.