Heavy bits of geometry fall from the sky. Wea flakes of mote flutter, reflecting the street lights like dust in a sunbeam. Each bit pulls toward me and I attempt to catch them on my tongue. I walk with crunching steps over the virgin snow, leaving imprints of slush in my wake. It sounds like a squeegee pestering a dry windshield and I giggle with the feeling under my soles.

I fall straight into a bank, backward, fainting. When I hit the snow like I would a downy mattress after a bender, I start to move. I move with rhythm and soul. My arms swing up and down while my legs stretch on the sides. I push the snow away to make an angel.

This action reminds me of youth, of time well spent long ago on a cold snow like this day.

Crunching up, I realize that I smote reality with a crack worse than lightning on a golf course under an old willow. Woe is this reality. I stand with ease and smile, wondering how my dexterity has a will of its' own. With similar ease, I stomp back and forth in the snow and marvel in nature. Like we would in a pothole cover in rain, I wallow for a split second.

The river is deeper than the banks of snow. Deep down, where Carp hibernate, bits of cold ground water seep into the river and freeze onto rocks and sand. The ice gets too big and carries the host it grew upon to the surface. Ice under water, moving rocks for the sake of.

This place is cold enough. So we thought.


I wasn't young the first time I saw the Mississippi. I was in my freshman year of college. We drank beer in the dorms and decided to wander to the river. We walked through campus, bumping hips through the sandstone quad. We laughed and journeyed into the wooded embankment of spring. A worn path of matted leaf wove along the spindling water. It was dark and the heady moon guided us through the shadow of bare branch. Our feet crushed leaves and we wandered about, absent caution. Logs and stones served as bridge as we meandered toward the bluffs that overlooked the river.

That time, it started to rain.

It wasn't rain, it was the splashing of the spring waterfall. Our path had guided us gradually down and around. The water sprung felled though a summer of thick moss and bounced off a giant stone three meters below. It splashed way up on us. We laughed and jumped to the path, a meter below. I could just smell autumn. Wet leaves under a near full moon, with girls and beer in me, this was wonderful. We clamored up the bank toward the tooting barges that honked near. We laughed at our sloshing up the muddy stone. Behold, a break in the branches over a turn, a bluff hung between us and the river. We sat and smoked cigarettes and gazed at the wonder of the mule rue abyss of streaking water below.

Later, when it was pouring sleet after Thanksgiving, I walked to the river. I had been there a few times since my encounter, but this time was full of whim. I felt the cold bits of ice pinch my cheeks as I hunkered down past F. Scott's house. I hurdled the railing with awkward ease and stumbled down to the snow strewn path. It was cold, but the snow hadn't accumulated. I walked to the bluff and sat down on the bare, windblown edge. My feet dangled and I stared at the river. The cold front had frozen over the edges of the river. The bank grew with ice toward the tumbling center. Mallards skidded across the surface. Beneath the thin film of ice, you could still see the brown, muddy water flow.

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