Today someone put one of those home-flyers on my doorknob.  When I first saw it, I thought–I kid you not–oh, someone left me cookies. Instead of chocolate chip or peanut butter, I got news about local business, much of it having to do with roof repair and carpet cleaning.  I don’t know why I expected cookies, but it was like the old MacDowell Colony habit of receiving a picnic basket with lunch inside.  Often, there was a cookie.  I began to imagine a friend who would drop off cookies just for no reason.  A terrific business named,say, Cookies on Wheels.  I guess the cold has me wishing for a care basket.  The cat that visits is completely curled up, dreaming of salmon, perhaps.

It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight.  The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward.  Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland.  It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves…It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.  His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.~James Joyce, “The Dead”

Here, it’s falling fast, in morning, over the cars and grass, swirling in two directions.  The flakes dance their way down, spinning.  It’s a light snow, or was, for now it’s the next day, and it’s stopped at last.  It fell for two days.  The ground is sparkling now with snow and sun.  Why do these lines sound so cheesy?  Is it because they follow Joyce, who really wrote about snow?