Weak sun. The delicate shattering of icicles dropping from the roof. The neighbor’s rooster calls hoarsely, as if out of practice.
icicles
Warm sun on new snow. From behind the house, the high-pitched whistling of waxwings. The porch roof’s last, snaggletoothed icicle lets go.
Yesterday’s snow on every branch? A filigree of drips sparkling in the sun. Periodic crashes from the back of the house as icicles let go.
The snow shovel lies supine, fresh snow in its scoop. Wind-blown icicle drips dot the squirrel and rabbit tracks with random punctuation.
The trees creak in the wind, casting only the thinnest of shadows. My breath freezes into two small icicles at the bottom of my beard.
Dimples stipple the snow below the porch where icicles dripped. Sparrow tracks circle a dame’s-rocket seed-head bent down by the last storm.
Bitter cold and overcast, but still the porch roof rattles with a staccato rhythm of drips from the second-floor roof’s two-inch icicles.
A titmouse lands in the cherry, the streak in his breast the same rust as a tree sparrow’s cap, a broomsedge stem, these icicles at sunrise.
Branches plastered with white still provoke that old schoolboy excitement: a snow day! The wet tips of the icicles tremble in the dawn wind.
Spindly icicles glitter on the eaves, stunted by too little of the white soil they need to grow, thinned by too much of the life-giving sun.