“No two snowflakes are alike,” they say,
but I don’t know who “they” are,
or why they say that.
They certainly haven’t been helping me
shovel my driveway this winter.

Scientists estimate that ten to the twenty-fourth
snowflakes fall each year,
Scientists estimate the earth is
four billion years old.
That’s a lot of snowflakes
and we haven’t even considered
man-made snow yet.

Heraclitus says,
“you can’t step in the same river twice”.
That river may be made
of the spring run off
of billions of melting snowflakes.

So perhaps, no two snowflakes are alike.
They exist at different times
In different places
made of different atoms.

Structurally, a snowflake I shovel off my driveway
might be the same as a snowflake
I sledded over when I was young,
or the snowflake that broke the camel’s back
as another roof collapsed.

The first snowflakes of the season,
met with much joy and excitement,
are now long gone,
though the high banks of dirty snow
pushed aside by snowplows
will last for several more weeks.

So, I’ll pause to wonder at snow falling on cedars
as Robert Frost wonders whose woods he’s in
and a cartoon character wants to build a snowman.