A word, you might say,
doesn’t carry much weight,
less even than a snowflake,
and a flake doesn’t weigh much,
doesn’t have much in the way
of substance or volume. No,
it takes a great many
to weigh on even a small branch,
just to bend it a little,
and then they have to stick,
those flakes, hold together
and stay, or they’re just so much
powder falling down to the ground,
obscuring temporarily but leaving
little of a lasting impression.
Still, often, like words, they do
stick, hold to each other, and
bear down. You might clump them
together by handfuls for a kind
of ammunition, or a walled defense.
You may find, when they lie
quite thick on the ground, thick
as words on a page, or a good
handful of pages, that the many
flakes pack down to something solid,
something you might travel on,
better than many a road I know.
You might even, with the right
sort of study, and a good deal of practice,
learn to make yourself a type of home
out of all those masses
of words—I mean flakes—
just so much snow on the ground.
—Elizabeth Cooper