The wind moves snow back and forth across the ground like a restless sculptor. Trees creak and groan: a regular machinery of discontent.
snow
February 10, 2012
This snow makes it so much easier to keep track of squirrels, their mad chases on the ground, through the trees—showers of white dust.
February 9, 2012
A branch breaks at the top of an oak, clatters through the too-loose grips of lower limbs and lands in the new snow’s too-shallow grave.
January 30, 2012
Where the fresh snow has just melted on the concrete walkway, a bright green blush of lichen. The nuthatch’s three nasal notes.
January 28, 2012
The snow is reduced to patches now, and the stream runs loud. The book I’m reading says there’s no such thing as a pure white horse.
January 25, 2012
I think it’s partly because the hillside is covered with evergreen laurel that this phenomenon of a white ground still seems so surreal.
January 21, 2012
Fresh, deep snow on all the outstretched branches at the woods’ edge—those trees that have always hungered for an extra helping of light.
January 20, 2012
Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway.
January 19, 2012
Each blanketing of snow so far this winter has happened while we slept. How superstitious to insist that it all must’ve fallen from the sky!
January 18, 2012
Trees rock and sway, infiltrated by snowflakes flying this way and that. From deep in the lilac, the wandering warble of a tree sparrow.
January 13, 2012
Wind-driven snow; I draw my hood tight. On the wall behind me, the thermometer’s big red arrow inches left like a clock running backward.
January 6, 2012
Clear sky, bright sun, and the temperature well above freezing. A crow’s shadow scuds over what’s left of the snow like a dark promise.
January 5, 2012
A steady hum of traffic from over the ridge spoils the pre-dawn quiet, just as the snow on the ground sullies the darkness.
January 3, 2012
Finally, a good facsimile of a winter morning: enough snow to cover the grass, and on the window a tangle of stitches etched in frost.