In the tongue of the beholder

The ground in Columbus is white again, and three or four nights ago it was quite beautiful. Have you ever noticed how calm, how peaceful the world seems immediately after an evening snow? This one came with a few hours of beautifully warm winter weather. It was almost as if one could remove the coat, hat, gloves and just walk around in the pristine freshness of the snowfall, celebrating our ability to breathe.

I wrote a poem years ago after driving home from work in a fresh winter snow. I wasn't a seasoned poet, but I tried to express the way that snow can be both beauty and the antithesis of beauty at once. A workshop instructor called it "the epitome of mixed metaphor." He thought it a useful criticism. I have never forgotten that--not that he didn't like the poem, but that he completely missed the point. That something so beautiful can be both beautiful and dangerous, peaceful and capable of injury and more was the point.

Our words are the same way. Upon our tongues and in our pens, we hold the ability to bless or curse, to uplift or to destroy. How much greater will our lives and our art become when we realize the fragile balance that rests in our use of this most unruly member. A tiny pink instrument of destiny.