Snow blowing sideways. A minute after I sweep it, the porch floor is white again. The blaze-orange vests of two hunters leaving the woods.
snow
Last night’s snow has left a scant half-inch of fur on all the trees—these naked sleepers. Some of it melts, some evaporates into fog.
White ground, white sky, but the roofs are shedding their snow drip by drip. Traffic noise coming from the west—sure sign of rain.
The deep quiet only heard on major holidays. With small puffs, snow is beginning to fall off branches, giving the trees a feathered look.
The silence of falling snow. It clings tight to everything, like any newborn. The neighbor’s rooster can’t believe it—he crows and crows.
This time of year thou mayst in me behold: trees creaking from the ice in their joints. Snow here and there, thin as drifts of dandruff.
Yesterday the wet ground glowed in subtle, late-autumn colors; now it’s blank white. Frost on the storm door—a map drawn with knives.
A skim of snow on the springhouse roof glows faintly blue under the blue sky. The sun turns the old, limp lilac leaves into stained glass.
A dry ticking of junco alarm calls from all directions. A small hawk—Cooper’s or sharp-shinned—hurtles between the snow-plastered trees.
A bitter wind scours the hillside, stirring the quarter-inch of new snow into fast-moving phantoms, back-lit by the sun.
Off through the woods, the sun illuminates a stripe of white where snow still lies under the blueberry bushes on the powerline right-of-way.
Fog and steady rain. A drenched gray squirrel bounds across what’s left of the snow and clears the rushing stream with a flying leap.
The resident naturalist emerges from the woods, white slacks and dark blue coat a perfect camouflage against the new snow and blue shadows.
By late morning, the snow begins to soften. I notice there’s hardly a spot in the yard where some animal hasn’t left a footprint.