Astonishing. Getting older and older, I still stand here at this window, watching as if never having watched anything like it before—the wrens, juncos, and purple finches picking the seeds strewn on the pile of frozen snow. Through my breath condensing into fog on the cold window pane, I still see bare branches chasing their shadows in the icy wind, black threads of water crinkling through fissures in the frozen river. I am aware that what I am seeing is no more, no less than the great Mystery, that of being here at all, that of seeing it—as from the other side of a mirror—snow, birds, my breath still condensing, that breath that started so long ago as my first cry.
FREDERICK FRANCK
