Outside the window the snow flies. It’s windy this morning, driving the white tufts in waves across the landscape. The trees are ghosts standing in the forest as if an “antiquing” photo app had been applied magically to the real world. Thick fluid streams of snow scurry across before my dazzled gaze, swirl across the glass and boil off the roof in the wind like white smoke.

   Two things stand close in the vignette of my morning: the cat, like a porcelain vase in front of the window. ears and tail twitching, her bright attention focussed on all that’s going on outside–the gusts of wind flicking remnants of grass and leaf still protruding above the white blanket, birds clustered around the feeder vying to a chance to land and fill their bellies, the billowing white sheet being shaken out over all of it.

   And a single leaf in midair, suspended by naught but faith, evidently, flapping about in a frenzy of motion as the wind tugs eagerly trying to carry it off. I soon realize that it’s tethered at the end of a spider’s long silk thread, near-invisible, joining leaf to roof gutter. But the illusion is perfect.

   Sitting in the stillness of the indoors, watching the wild winter motion outside the window, I think about the cat and the leaf. Which one do I most resemble, I wonder?

   The cat, my mind with room for but one singular thought at a time, my focus sharp and attentive to whatever passes before me, missing not the slightest quiver of motion? Or the leaf, fluttering off in all directions at once, moving in random chaos wherever the fickle wind carries me?

   These are a few of the things I sit and think about as I sit and think about things. And after a time deeply immersed in such nomad thoughts, moving between these delicious possibilities, I realize I am both.

   I am the leaf, wildly riding on every new possibility I encounter with eager anticipation, trying this, doing that, moving, touching, tasting, embracing all that comes my way.

   And I am the cat, sitting alone, silent, removed, aware but not interacting, watching all that soars and dances about me as if viewing from somewhere far above.

   But suddenly I realize I am much more than just these two things. There is a deeper current that carries me, a current both mysterious and simple. It is what I tap into when writing a good piece of prose or poetry. Call it intuition, spirituality, sixth sense. Call it what you will. It is accessible to all of us.

   I am also the snow.