In Which Snowmen Gather

I left my desk several times today, donning layers of grey and stepping into slush past my ankles en route to one park or another. By dusk, snow creatures stood every five, every twenty, every four feet, snow arms in snow pockets, grand, swooping hats pieced from discarded saucer sleds and broken branches. Once the hands that might theoretically have formed them had been dragged home, been scolded for going mittenless, it was as though each snowman had simply gathered his bearings and risen up from the snow sometime around two-thirty, brushing himself off, as snowmen do, and findng a satisfying vantage point for himself not too near the others. Perhaps where to wait and wonder after his pipe. No one much was around but the village of silent snowmen and a few overtired, pelted littles. And chatty, annoying lovers with too-bright camera flashes blinding self-made snowmen's button eyes.