In the pre-dawn darkness, the wall of trees is in motion, like a silent waterfall. I’m either having an acid flashback, or it’s snowing.

Like sand in an hourglass this pellet snow. Three craters in the yard—grass, leaves—from something that’s trying to turn back the clock.

The promised snowstorm has yet to arrive. The air is dead still, and an hour after daybreak, the ground remains lighter than the sky.

The sun glimmers from a shrinking patch of open sky along the horizon. Lake-bottom wrecks, in another minute the icy lid will cover us all.

Clear and cold at dawn, with a crescent moon tangled in the treetops. A tiny white prayer flag flutters from a branch: some vacant cocoon.

With each new snowfall the ground grows more uniform, our footprints grow harder to read, and cries die quickly, as in a soundproofed room.