A broken trough along an eave at Auschwitz Block 5
Lets melting snow splash to the earth.
Unruly escape from an assigned path.
On a hundred other buildings the troughs function well.
According to plan.
Collecting every drop.
Guiding them along gutters.
To waiting drains.
And into the anonymous darkness below.
Snow is water,
And water is life.
Cycles of separation and absorption.
A hovering snowflake, riding currents from sky to ground,
Was once liquid drop.
Then warm rising vapor.
Now a crystalline flake, singular,
And tracing a singular path, unrepeatable.
It will fall eventually, necessarily.
Yet it will find that broken trough,
Fall into the light,
And nourish a spring tender and green.