Those Perfect Snowflakes

It's snowing today, white, drifting flakes. The hillsides are white, the trees dusted with silver. My youngest woke me early, wanting to go out to see the snow falling, and falling.
In town it is a rare thing; usually we get rain in the winter, floods and surges and mudslides. In the hills, yes, sometimes a snow storm or two, but not in the town, which is at a lower elevation, near the river.
It being Friday, I stood this evening down the street in my woman in black vigil, a black scarf wrapped round my head for warmth, gloves on, my breath white, my feet cold. My environmentalist friend is snowed in, and Sara was enroute to the airport early this morning; others who now and then stand are out of the country or beyond the open highways today.
The times I stand by myself are often the best times of all for me. To be in one place, watching the clouds, tasting the snow filled air. To be still and mindful.The ravens did not seem to like today's snow, and huddled in the big redwood tree near the church, murmuring raven complaints in soft voices.
I held two boards with numbers on them; estimated Iraqi civilian deaths; US military deaths.
The numbers grow alarmingly, week after week, and as I stand I try to bring to mind actuality, not number.
Today I had one other number in mind, one other soul, having just heard that Tom Fox's body had been found. He was a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams; three others are still in captivity somewhere. Actually, thousands, thousands, are in captivity throughout the world held by governments or fools, held for money, power--or for something I don't know and can't comprehend. I read the reports from Guantanamo, from the so called "black prisons" (the secret sites where people accused of this or that are hidden, tortured, god knows what). I read obsessively, and correspond, and publish a newspaper, and...
and stand in the snow, with grief and some numbers on my heart.
I watched the snowflakes drifting, remembering childhood wonder: each is different. Each is unique. Each is beautiful. There were so many snowflakes.
There are so many souls.
Oh yes, I know in the long run, in eternity, it should all work out. But there are times I am too impatient for eternity, too battered by the seemingly useless, unneeded deaths of bright souls.
I thought this evening of how mothers have stood holding the photographs of the disappeared, of their husbands or children, or fathers or other dear ones. I thought the numbers on my boards were like those pictures, an infinite and terrible swirl of loss and longing.
I want the world to grow up, beyond war and terror. Or to be forever about four years old, bright faced, seemingly invincible, watching the lovely snow drift from the sky.