A Prayer: On Synthetic Snowflakes

A Prayer: On Synthetic Snowflakes

Rachel Hicks

Only beauty will call to them and save them
So that they still know how to say: this is true and that is false.
— Czeslaw Milosz

An electron microscope brings to light our failure: 
our creative powers truncated into gob-like flakes 
too dense to dance, the dull dream of a hollow core. 

These flakes lack the hexagonal balance of the real 
whirl and whorl. We’ve seen it—symmetry so intricate 
we gasp in delight; crystals branching from the surprise 

of a dust-mote centerpiece; rime ice caught in mid-
pirouette against cold glass.   Have we lost the capacity
to marvel at this complexity? To praise, even, the dark center 

melting against our skin? (The familiar ache: all we touch 
reduces—edges flat, blurred.)   So we come to ask:
crystalize our stilted imaginations, our flat souls.

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Rachel Hicks
Editor & Poet

Rachel’s poetry has appeared in Anglican Theological Review, Vita Poetica, Relief, The Baltimore Review, and other journals. She is editor of Among Worlds magazine and works as a freelance copyeditor. Read more of her work at rachelehicks.com.

Photography by Haydin Olivia Oechsle