Warrior in a Murmuration of Snow Flakes

soldier

It was not a confused snow;
Large flakes bobbing and drifting on meek drafts,
Uncertain where to land.

Nor was it a helpless snow,
Each flake driven to its end
By a commanding wind.

Neither was it a diamond crystal snow,
Each particulate sparkling in the light,
As it blasted the skin
like sand shot by its cruel wind.

It was instead a mystical murmuration
Of imperceptible flakes
undulating this way and that;
a gray veil floating on calm currents,
willfully defying descent.

I recognized its for what it was:
A beckoning from another world .

It was in that snow on that night,
In Afghan Park, that we stood –
our swords close to our bodies,
tips resting lightly on our shoulders,
our eyes fixed on her,
waiting for our lesson to begin.

She stood before the undulating veil,
bent her knees, tilted her sword so that it lay across her arm.
No longer a sword, it became a mirror
In which she saw the otherwise unseen.
Her right hand lifted to grasp the handle,
And then the sword moved behind her, over her shoulder
Before she brought it down hard,
Sliced open the misty snow,
Opened the entrance to a world,
In which she showed herself in her essence –
Pure warrior spirit, moving in eternal murmuration.

Mary Metzger is a 72 year old retired teacher who has lived in Moscow for the past ten years. She studied Women’s Studies under Barbara Eherenreich and Deidre English at S.U.N.Y. Old Westerbury. She did her graduate work at New York University under Bertell Ollman where she studied Marx, Hegel and the Dialectic. She went on to teach at Kean University, Rutgers University, N.Y.U., and most recenly, at The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology where she taught the Philosophy of Science. Her particular area of interest is the dialectic of nature, and she is currently working on a history of the dialectic. She is the mother of three, the gradmother of five, and the great grandmother of 2.

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