Snowflake
        
                      by
                   Richard Fein     

 
Catch one on a cold slide,
lay it out like a corpse on a gurney and pursue the autopsy,
focus your squinting eye through the eyepiece
while aligning the entity over the hole---
and before the rising light,
under an objective lens
lies a translucent singularity,
a crystalline pattern
not quite like the other falling billions.
 
But its unique complexity is brief
for the heat of the light and a steamy breath
reduce the pattern to a drop,
a drop among drops
that are all disposed of in a beaker
to splash randomly against the clear glass.