Build Me a Snowcow

You know the best kind of snow: medium-size flakes falling fast and thick, just damp enough to stick together and build a snow fort, stock it with snowballs, and after a sure and swift victory, fashion the perfect snowman. Last Wednesday had it all: temps holding at 32 degrees F, snowing so smoothly the mountains disappeared; everything a silent, silky blur of tumbling iridescence. And I was hard at work.

I rolled the first hunk of snow until it was so big I had to put my hip against it to make the last turn. Then I set it just right – where my snowman would face the road and greet with good cheer, each passerby. His finished self would be visionary, I had decided. No wooly hat and scarf for my creation – he was born to be a poet, reading verse to the trees and birds. A mixed-fiber burgundy cardigan would wrap about his ample body and a French beret sit slanted atop his snow-white head. Being a nonsmoker (health-conscious, of course), instead of a pipe, he would hold a book close to his chest and with the other arm outstretched he would appear to recite words of love to the world. I would name him Percy.

I turned back to start rolling the chunk of snow that would be Percy’s upper body. One second my immediate world was mysterious – shrouded in swirling whiteness. The next second: a hulking mass was pushing toward me, completely snow-covered except for a dash of auburn down the shuffling legs. The apparition emerged from the Mysterious and halted abruptly in front of me. Large, despondent brown eyes peered at me from snow-encrusted eyelashes.

“It was spring yesterday,” a sad voice murmured. Then the bulky form belched in a familiar and endearing way.

“Yes. Yes it was,” I replied undaunted. True, it had been a lovely day on Tuesday, reaching into the 60s. I had remarked to No One Listening that the grass was even turning quite green for early March. But a touch of late winter keeps one alert and guessing, I assumed. If nothing else –

“I suppose it’s good for the spring hay crop and gardens,” the now-shivering beast said with a sigh, completing my thought. No question now who I was conversing with.

“See?” I said pleasantly, trying to cheer up my disgruntled cow, “I’m building a snowman. Want to help?” The look returned from the Being before me was less supportive than I would expect from such a normally placid and balanced creature. Perhaps it was her day off.

“His name is Percy,” I continued cheerily. “He’s a poet, inspired by nature.”

“I suppose he gives freely of his work?” Christina asked. She seemed to be perking up.

“Absolutely,” I replied. Things were shifting here. Was my beloved cow turning the simple act of snowman-building into another one of her Life Lessons?

“Uh-huh,” she said, once again reading my thoughts while nodding and gulping. Cud followed. Things to be Chewed On With Care. I always thought she should write a handbook.

“And, being earthbound,” she continued with more animation now, “he understands about strengths and weaknesses? Does he feel passionately about the sanctity of all life? Does he…”

“Yeah, okay, sure.” I said hastily. Percy was to be, after all, a snowman. He wasn’t running for Poet Laureate.

But Christina was obviously on a roll – but not the kind I needed right then, the kind that binds snowflake to snowflake until you have a firm yet well-toned midsection for said snowman. Never mind, Christina was not even reading my thoughts by this point.

She circled widely and carefully around Percy’s beginnings, as if pondering an as-yet uncarved block of stone. “hmmmm,” she said softly. More circling, more hmmmming while the day was moving rapidly toward dusk.

I decided to return to my happy task and began rolling the next chunk of Percy’s anatomy.

“Wait!” the trembling bovine behind me cried. Was she cold? Ill? My heart raced with concern.

“Does Percy understand about vulnerability and impermanence?” she demanded.

“Is your poet-intended versed in the concept of immortality?”

Oh, not cold or ill. Only her Inner Philosopher tuning up. I breathed easily again.

“Please!” Christina declared, stomping her left front foot, not the best sign. “I mean it. Look!” she said, nodding her head toward Percy’s abbreviated form. “You have begun to create not just a snowman, but a SnowSomeone! Someone with energy, name and passion. A poet, and by your description, not one who writes for profit and fame, but for the love of the word as art and communication, for love, for goodness sake. How can Percy be just any other snowman?”

I looked first at Percy’s bare beginnings. And then at my by-now exuberant Teacher. And with utmost respect I asked her, “So what’s your point?”

She stared at me with that bland expression cows are so famous for, the one that tends to get them labeled “dumb animals.” And then up came the cud again. Slow rotation of the jaws. Silence. Lowering of the eyelashes.

I knew I was in trouble.

“Forget building Percy. That’s my strong advice,” she said quietly.

“But….”

She lifted that left front foot and placed it Just So, an inch from the new ball of snow. “If you are going to create someone, anyone, create with conscience and build me a snow cow.” And she turned and started to walk back to the barn. I looked from Percy’s meager start in life to Christina as she began to once again melt into the veil of falling snow. And I thought, and thought, and thought.

“Think about the sun!” came drifting through the flakes.

Alright. The sun. My turn to “hmmmmmmm.” Yes, tomorrow the sun was forecast to re-emerge; spring in its more temperate persona, would return. The snow would melt and….. Oh! Percy! My poet! He would dissolve back to earth, still pitifully proclaiming the importance of love. I turned to yell in the direction of the barn, but a cough and hiccup behind me caught my words half born and I sat down abruptly in the snow.

The soft voice and garlic breath of my familiar friend embraced me from just above: “Percy, gentle soul that he is destined, by your vision, to become, would not understand why one day, this day, he is Poet Extraordinaire, and the next a mere puddle on a swampy lawn. He is to be fashioned, after all, after humanity, is he not?”

I nodded, dismally. I had held such great plans for my Percy.

“Nonsense,” Christina replied, eavesdropping on my brain. “The poet shall live, but let him enjoy existence as a cow poet, a creature who is experienced at living as love, not just the purveyor of words. Cows know that whatever is their current lot: material existence or meltdown, a true poet lives no matter what. Cows are so much better at handling the ebb and flow of life, the emergence of energy into form; the dissolving of form back into fluid energy. We have that stuff down pat. Believe me, Percy would thank you.”

With that parting statement, my companion once again trod northward toward the warmth of her stall and hay, leaving me pondering how to construct a cow from snow.

“Well,” came drifting through the air, “If I were you, I would start with the body, then add the legs and head – don’t forget the tail…and that cardigan would be a nice touch….”

You know the best kind of snow, when that last fling of late winter keeps one alert and guessing, if nothing else….