14 11.8.
We are them.
They are
us. We, too, will
disappear.
We will become
abstractions to
be puzzled
over by future
people.Illustration by R. O. Blechmansee the snowballs’ impact blasts as clear-
ly as bullet holes.
And then there is the bicycle. This is
the peak moment of brutality, when the
whole group loses its collective god-
damn mind. Right from the start, you
can see the cyclist coming: a small fi g-
ure, growing larger every second, glid-
ing smoothly on an angle toward the
fray. Before he even reaches the crowd,
he starts to take distant fi re. And yet
he is determined to ride on. When he
arrives, all the warring factions turn to
unite against him, unleashing a wickedly
targeted cyclone. The cyclist takes hard
shots to the arm, the face, the back, the
neck. Still he pedals forward, hunching
his back, spinning his long legs — a stoic
hero, intent on gliding through the vio-
lence, determined to reach the safety of
the other side.
But he can’t. The cyclist absorbs one
blow too many. He collapses like a bro-
ken toy. His legs fl y up in the air; his hat
lands upside down in the snow. Before
he can even get up, the cyclist is pelted
again, and someone tries to steal his
bike — but the cyclist stands and rips it
away, then hops back on, abandoning his
hat, retreating, pedaling off the way he
came, taking powdery sniper fi re as he
goes. It is an object lesson in futility, in
noble intentions thwarted — one man’s
vision destroyed by the sudden madness
of a crowd.
Off in the middle distance, two men
stand near a street lamp, watching the
mayhem, never moving, like Beckett
characters, thinking who knows what.
On an intellectual level, we all under-
stand that historical people were basical-
ly just like us. All those stiff fi gures frozen
in blurred photos and smoke-stained
oil paintings — the endless parade of
side-whiskers, small dogs, billowing
dresses, baggy trousers. The ancestors
who laid down our roads and built our
houses and planted the trees whose
leaves still clog our gutters. The mulched
lives that made us possible. They lived, as
we do, in the throbbing nerve-pocket of
the now. They were anxious and unsure,
bored and silly. Nothing that would hap-
pen in their lifetimes had happened yet.
The ocean of time was crashing fresh
waves, nonstop, against the rocks of their
days. And like us they stood there, gasp-
ing in the cold spray, wondering what
people of the past were like.
Who knows what will happen? Where will we land? How will we spend the winter?
Count on an owl to fulfi ll its destiny. Margaret Noodin’s new collection, ‘‘What the
Chickadee Knows,’’ part of the Great Lakes Books Series, is an exquisite bilingual journey
of languages and observations ‘‘situated between the traditions of the past... and the
innovation needed for survival into the future.’’ As in this slim, strong poem, meditating
on the world around and beyond our human doings off ers respite, deeper time.
Note the movements of snow, cold and wind and the fl apping of great wings. We are
incidental in their precious stories.And yet it’s hard, across such wide gulfs
of time, to really feel this connection. So to
watch this snowball fi ght, to see these peo-
ple so alive, is a precious gift of perspec-
tive. We are them. They are us. We, too, will
disappear. We will become abstractions
to be puzzled over by future people. That
certainty, in the fl ux of 2020, feels anchor-
ing. We are not unique. We move in thehistorical fl ow. The current moment will
melt away like snow crust on a mustache.
In Lyon, this street from the snowball
fi ght is still there. It still looks basically
identical: the trees, the buildings. I am
staring at it now on my computer screen,
and in my mind I am already planning
a trip, imagining a pilgrimage, in some
unrecorded future.Screenland
Poem Selected by Naomi Shihab NyeLanding Here
By Margaret NoodinWhen it stops snowing in winter and deep cold arrives to crack the
ice
We stop hearing the freezing then listen for the great horned owls
They forgive one another and begin to mate while the world is
frozen
Landing on pine branches as snow falls gently in large fl akes
Eventually she lays an egg then ignores the world until it breaksNaomi Shihab Nye is the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her most
recent book is ‘‘Everything Comes Next — Collected & New Poems’’ (Greenwillow Books). Margaret Noodin
is the author of ‘‘What the Chickadee Knows’’ (Wayne State University Press, 2020), which contains poems in
Anishinaabemowin and English. She is professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.