A gray squirrel in heat waits for her escort to chase off a rival suitor before resuming their game of follow-the-leader, now much more slowly, across the crusted snow.
snow
Gray above, white below: a snowbird hops atop five inches of fresh snow, noshing on goldenrod, snakeroot, and stiltgrass seeds, leaving lines of little arrows pointing backwards.
Snow flurries at sunrise. My canvas sleeves become collections of daggers and asterisks—a short-lived museum of the moment.
Overcast and quiet before dawn. A half-inch of fresh snow sticks to everything, glowing faintly in the light of a hidden moon.
Clear as a bell and cold as a well, notwithstanding which the brown mountain is beginning to show through its thin blanket of snow.
Well below freezing, with a half-inch of snow on the ground and a wind that keeps turning the pages of my book. The sun appears for a second or two through a gray eyelid of cloud.
The western ridge is white with snow and more flakes spin down from thinning clouds, bellies turning orange against the blue. A crow kites overhead without flapping a wing.
A dusting of snow—not even enough to bury the moss. Three gray squirrels in a high-speed chase circle the bole of an oak, claws on bark like castanets.
A scurf of snow on the ground. A few fat clouds, barely moving, turn orange. A lone crow in the treetops coos like a dove.
Wet snow plastered to everything except the moon, somewhere above the clouds. Off to the southeast, a siren starts to wail.
The sun guttering below a lid of utility-gray cloud illuminates a small flotilla of snowflakes. It’s quiet apart from one, highly excited wren.
The porch is plastered with fresh snow; more flakes fly past without stopping. A Carolina wren holds forth from the heart of a barberry.
A fresh inch of wet snow, clinging to every twig—the forest refoliated in white. But already the roof has begun to drip.
As above, so below—the ground the same white as the cloud ceiling. My thick hat excludes all but the sound of wind and birds and a train horn’s dissonant chord.