“White on Black” by Ben Stoltzfus

The petals of the plum-tree blossoms gyrate into swirling white clouds. When the wind subsides, the petals fall from the sky. Another gust of wind sweeps them upward into new, continuous, whirling successions of white. After the petals fall, the ground is covered in layers of white--layers that look like snow. It is snowing. You open your mouth, chase ragged snowflakes, and each flake melts on your tongue--a bit of nothing, a pinprick of cold. Snowflakes fall into your eyes, on your cheeks and onto the sleeve of your blue jacket. You examine their symmetry, each flake a six-pointed jewel. The blizzard covers the hills and fields with deep drifts. Everything is white, even the serpentine line of the river that undulates through the valley--undulating in elegant curves. You are now skiing down hill above the river, gaining speed. You pump your knees up and down for each turn, you swivel your hips, you angle your arms and shoulders, sideways, your skis sideslip and your ankles press forward. You slide into an easy arc to the left, then to the right, and again to the left, in an ongoing flow of up, down and around. Trees. Many trees. Whish, whish, whish and whish. Each turn is a carved S etched in white. A masterpiece. The cadence is exhilarating, as precise as music and the pitch is perfect. The moment is alive, the momentum is satisfying. Your body is complete unto itself. It is fulfilled. Attuned. No thought required, and the present is a present--present. White seeps through the cracks of memory. White, like city sounds sifting through leaves, slips through winter branches. The tree trunks are black. Crows on a snow bank, like punctuation marks, dot the landscape. Letters, words and sentences flow like the river in the valley that is now thawing in the warm winds of spring, leaving winter behind. The valley is space, memory is time and the two merge onto this white page. Space and time are real, as real as the words that strive for the perfect pitch and rhythm of the skier who, once again, is sliding around the trees or slipping in and out of a turn as she descends toward the river, toward the white valley--a white that is now thawing. The drifts along the riverbank are almost gone. Earth. Snowdrops open. The buds on the plum trees blossom again, and the wind blows the petals upward in white, gyrating spirals.