Snowflake

By William Baer b. 1948 William Baer

Timing’s everything. The vapor rises

high in the sky, tossing to and fro,

then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes

into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.

For countless miles, drifting east above

the world, whirling about in a swirling free-

for-all, appearing aimless, just like love,

but sensing, seeking out, its destiny.

Falling to where the two young skaters stand,

hand in hand, then flips and dips and whips

itself about to ever-so-gently land,

a miracle, across her unkissed lips:

as he blocks the wind raging from the south,

leaning forward to kiss her lovely mouth.

Source: Borges and Other Sonnets (Truman State University Press, 2003)

Biography

William Baer was born in Geneva, New York in 1948. As a writer, editor, translator and professor, Baer has authored and edited fifteen books, among them The Unfortunates, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1997, and Bocage and Other Sonnets, recipient of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Baer is the founding editor of The Formalist, a literary journal dedicated to Formalist poetry, and serves as a contributing editor of Measure. He . . .

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