And I look down onto the frozen pond, which the wind has rippled into an imperfect mirror, and I see the deep December sky, and I think -- is this pond image a parody of the real? -- an amusing distortion -- or a travesty? -- one of the many inadequate representations of that immensity arching above us, but this one a failure of Nature herself -- or perhaps even a burlesque? -- not the low form of burlesque, but that form of burlesque that followed each Greek tragedy designed to send the patrons home laughing at their own part in the vast comic conspiracy? Or, as Traherne says, is such an image an image of ourselves, distorted reflections of the ideal that we carry about with us; or, to be more pointed, like the crumpled photographs of forgotten loves that the lonely carry about half-forgotten in their wallets, to be rediscovered only occasionally when, upon receipt of a new wallet on Christmas day, the shards of one's official life and one's unofficial secrets, are shaken out from the old and transferred to the new?

yours, Peter T.