I think I will miss the snow most of all.  That magic frosting upon the land—air made tangible, and bright, and pure—weighing down the boughs and giving form to the weird and wonderful dynamisms of wind.  Snow, that lifts its shining face up to brighten the gloom and comfort the sad monument of winter.  Snow, like fluid time frozen in its flight and made as weightless and bright as fleeting hope itself. 

I know I have said other things; that I would miss most of all the gulping down of cold carbonated beverages, or that, more than all other things, I was most fond of that first sip of hot coffee in the morning.  I have said, at moments, that this moment I will miss one day more than all the rest.  Such moments occurred fleetingly, no more enduring than a hesitation in the ebb and flow of endorphins.  And no less substantial than a tear-eyed sigh.  Like when I was a young firefighter, mopping up after a 'worker' (a major fire), repacking hose beds with my friends, knowing I belonged to them, and they to me.  Or charging off together, as we often did, to the rescue—and sometimes we did rescue.  But sometimes we couldn't save anyone, and all we had was each other.  With occasional clarity, I was able to know that those moments would one day be more precious than any gold, and sorely missed. 

But these, though beautifully embroidered, and with stitches deeply anchored, are but distant memories, and distance dumbs our perceptions, allowing us to sweeten the reminiscence—artificially.  For example, I know that if it had happened more recently than ten years past, I would not be singing the praises of that unexpected heat I found deep inside the mean mechanics of sex:

"Did it feel good?" he asked.

"It felt, ...it felt like ...home," I panted. 

At the time, I wouldn't even admit I'd been there.  Now, however, I remember the incident as in a shining golden light—and I publish it. 

The snow does not come so seldom now, as do such bed-borne events.  Remote in memory, my physical passions are recalled with a luminance appliqu�d.  But the snow... its luminance is intrinsic, its gleam flashes in synchrony with a light stored deep in my synapses, triggering in my soul a knowledge from before knowing, of a place from before existence, where purity is never sullied by these imperfect efforts to describe it.