Every morning should start this way, with enough snow fallen in the night to erase yesterday’s tracks: the proverbial clean slate. The sound of my neighbor’s plow scraping down to the ice.

A fresh scurf of snow on the porch. The trees with their moon-shadows stretching east like dark carpets rolled out for the rumored sun. All the old aches in my body. It’s cold.

The deep cold has returned, bringing silence and a bitter wind. The just-past-full moon slips behind a cloud in the west and never returns. From under the house, the sound of gnawing.