Most everything has a name except the falling snow,
        By which I mean each flake, each one different,
As one spirit is different from another, and close up,
        Under a micropscope, crystalline, like a thing made
By a master watchmaker with a motor the size
        Of a fingernail and an awl as fine as hair.

Sillier men than I have tried to name the flakes of snow
        While standing hatless at a bus stop, watching the snow
Fall on apple trees and oaks, making them all the same.
        Did you know that among the ancient Hebrew tribes
Children were given two names at birth,
        One sacred, one profane? The child wasn't told

The sacred one. So he walked around with two names,
        One by which to be called in from the sheepfold
And the other intricate, mysterious, useless.
        And in Norway, circa early twentieth century,
There were so few hereditary names to pass down
        Everyone must have thought everyone else a cousin.

Maybe that's why they're so polite, so orderly, and why,
        If it's snowing in Oslo, there will always be
A helpful soul standing beside you to offer space
        The size of an umbrella while waiting for the bus.
In America a name means nothing — a marker to be called in,
        A convenience: Mr. Weaver may not be at his loom,

Nor Mr. Lavender making soap. Nor does anyone remember
        Herr Gross, the fat man who stood in line waiting for
The greedy minions of the fanatic Empress Maria Theresa
        To take his money and bestow upon him a name
To be passed down to fat and skinny children alike.
        And if a man were even poorer, and as a mean joke,

He might be called the German equivalent of Grease,
        Or Monkey Weed or Do Not Borrow From or Gallows Rope.
In Russia, in 1802, to raise an army, Czar Alexander
        Sent out a ukase ordering each Jew to take a last name —
It must have been like writing a poem, mind-sprung
        And wholly inspired on first draft, then inscribing it

One the forehead of a neighbor, each one befitting:
        Eismann, for He Who Laughs, or Mazal, Lucky Man,
Or Trubnic for Chimney Sweep, or Soroka The Magpie,
        Meaning The Gossip. And babies in those days
Were sometimes given ugly names to turn aside
        The assiduous, bureaucratic Angel of Death;

Or, in illness, a child was renamed to befuddle
        The same angel coming down with his empty sack
To collect for God'd heavens. But naming the snow,
        Each flake, each deliquescing cryptic coat of arms,
That would be a game for only the most inventive,
        Hopeless man. For after all, the snowflakes

Are the soon-to-be dead, those who float awhile
        Then fall and, merging, pile up like corpses
On some northern battlefield, and there melt, flow
        Down as water to the river that has one name only.
It so happens it's snowing where I'm standing now
        At a bus stop in Oslo, between one moment and the next,

Feeling nostalgic, homesick, trying to remember the names
        Of everyone I've ever known. Hopeless, of course.
So it worries me that my son, who is more like me
        Than I care to think about, could recite the names
Of each child in his kindergarten class after only one week
        Of sitting with his hands folded on his desk.

He wasn't praying, he told me. He was waiting
        For the names to sink in so one morning he could say,
Suddenly, to each one, Hi, because it's good
        To be remembered. By the time we are old
We can baptize each flake before the bus arrives.
        There are so many people to know by name,

So many... They grew away from me.
        They became snow, fuzzy at this distance,
Just beyond my reach, waiting to be called upon again.