The wind has scoured the branches clean, but the old concrete dog standing at point in the shelter of the lilac still wears a coat of snow.
snow
January 12, 2011
Three gray squirrels in a slow-motion chase: this is when they come into heat. The new snow cascades from the branches like wedding veils.
January 10, 2011
I study the twists and curlicues of dried brome grass against the snow. If I knew Arabic, I’m sure I’d find some of the 99 names of God.
January 9, 2011
Drifting snow, just deep enough to provide cover for voles. A snow dervish rises from the road and travels a dozen feet before collapsing.
January 8, 2011
The landscape conforms to the snowbird’s body plan: gray above, white below. Feathery puffs wherever a bird lands on a snowy branch.
January 7, 2011
Dawn unveils a new snowfall light as down, all horizontal limbs redrawn in white like colonies of the horizon. I sit clipping my nails.
January 5, 2011
Flakes in the air and the barest fur on the ground, like a leaf’s glaucous bloom. A low-key chattering match of nuthatches 100 yards apart.
January 3, 2011
The return of the cold has saved the last, handkerchief-sized patches of snow. In the east, a silent jet trails the smallest of wakes.
December 20, 2010
A flurry reveals the secret weavings of the wind, spreads a shroud over the porch, and litters my propped-up legs with cryptic asterisks.
December 10, 2010
Emily Dickinson’s 180th birthday. The sky’s flat whiteness matches the ground: the blank of a page, of self-erasure, of astonishment.
December 7, 2010
The hissing of the wind blends with the sighing of my furnace. I wonder how far away this latest drift was born. Is it Pittsbugh’s snow?
December 5, 2010
That first snow still cloaks the frozen earth. When the wind dies, I can hear the 75 finches at my parents’ birdfeeder, a twittering bedlam.
December 2, 2010
A blaze-orange hunting coat floats through the snowy woods, out-of-place as a sign in the desert: burning bush, billboard, neon whorehouse.
February 8, 2010
It’s one of those perfect winter mornings from my childhood: bright sun on deep snow and even the shadows sparkling as I shake my head.