Snowfire

Small silver explosions mob the expectant air like paparazzi’s flashes. Soon, giant hydrangeas bloom fluorescent, spread like a bouquet of slow-motion Big Bangs, and are blotted by night. But the dark can’t keep up, as burst after burst of strange flowers, mourning the hydrangeas, wreathes the sky in an outpouring of dyed fires to a requiem of crackles and booms. Then, out of the black mystery above tumbles a weather of headlong prisms. Some, recognizing the same brevity yet coveting the bright, hurl themselves into the spraying neon sparks, and are gone in a hiss unheard. Others, beckoned by a destiny of gravity, continue on, slipping through the crossfire of fiery tentacles, and are lit up momentarily. Above us, then, a skyful of rising light and falling white.