The cabin is clapboard white, its slanted roof white,
drifts of snow are white.
If not for the sun’s glitter, all would disappear.
No one has written the story, as of yet no black letters.
There comes the old woman, bent like a comma.
She is dragging a line of black text,
a large black seal, the kind that often loll
on beaches when tired of swimming.
It slides along the ice from left to right,
an opening sentence, then halfway back
and back again. So many fragments… she is struggling
to maintain connection with a small moment of time
and it happens every day, small and
ephemeral. The seal may be her snow shovel.
Love conquers all. Wreckless cruelty will not win.
If only she could find the topic sentence.