Winter has been generous with its snowfalls. The adults fretted over the inconvenience caused by the snow, but the children, delighted by the unscheduled holiday, built a circle of snowmen on the seminary lawn.

Today the warm rains began, and already the snowmen have begun to shrink and to take on the curvatures of old age. In the lamplight at dusk, they bring to mind the circle of Stonehenge. But unlike those ruined megaliths, the snowmen will disappear. In a few days they will be no more than lumps of snow on a greening lawn.

given to each man
his allotted span of days—
so too, the snowmen

island sunrise-
watching the 'Opihi Man
gathering 'opihi