Snowflakes, Christmas, and Donna Mae

It’s snowing.
Not much, but enough
to tickle my senses 
with thoughts of Christmastime.
If this were sixty years ago,
I would gaze out the frosty window
of my trouble-free rural home
and envision God sprinkling
Ivory Flakes from a blue box,
dotting the pine trees with white.
Cardinals now flitter about,
perching themselves on delicate twigs
as if they, too, are excited 
about the coming snow and Christmas.
Scientists tell me that each flake
is dissimilar, and I suppose 
I will have to believe what they say,
for they are the experts, not I.
Still, it causes me to wonder 
about such things and how they know. 
As I watch the flakes drift
to all the places they finally decide to land,
my thoughts turn to my sister-in-law, 
Donna Mae, and how she cherished Christmas.
I ask myself, How could anyone instill 

the joy of decorating a tree, simply 

by the way she draped shimmering icicles 

over snow-sprayed boughs?

But that was Donna. 
She turned everything she looked at, smelled, heard, tasted, or felt

into delight of some kind.
She was matchless in countless ways.
I speak of Donna in days gone by,
for she has graduated to the place
where unlike snowflakes are created
and Christmas lasts forever.
Farewell, Donna Mae, 
my sister-in-law and friend. 
We shall miss you during this moment in time and all the Christmases yet to come.
But I will fix my eyes on all the pretties
decorating our tree, touch the 
sparkling snowflakes, and think of you— 
smiling and taking incalculable pleasure 
in it all.

©️2006 By David Lee Thompson