Snow Day

Friday, we went for a walk in the white world, crunching on dry snow, watching children who had never seen snow before, careen down frozen streets on sheets of hard plastic.

Friday night we joined another friend on a bus going downtown. The bus got stuck in a snowdrift, and then all passengers transferred to a bus in the middle of the street, the bus sent to rescue people from stranded buses. And we made it to the William Stafford Centennial celebration. Ted Kooser was the headliner, but he wasn't able to make it. A fever, flu, cancelled flights. Li-Young Lee was there and read a love poem. Said he thought he would be dead now if it weren't for the poems of William Stafford. Saved his life, he said.

Then you’ll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.
--Li-Young Lee, in “Become Becoming”

Three hours of people reading poems and talking about William Stafford, and then we caught a bus home. It stayed in the middle of the street. We made it.

A year ago today, we were looking at pictures in a gallery. It was a completely different world. We were different people then.