Time Change Day! I for one welcome our chronological overlords, and I’m out at the new 6:30 just as the weather, too, is making a change, the creek roaring, snowflakes drifting down.
snowflakes
I’m grateful to the snowflakes for mostly not landing on the pages of my book and sailing on by. Am I fully acclimated to the winter now? It’s disconcerting how much the darkness has receded, only a month past the solstice.
First light. White lines crisscross the dark edge of the woods: snow on trees. I stick my hand out to feel it falling, flakes as fine as dust melting into my palm.
Snow falling at dawn—fine flakes at first, then larger and faster as the darkness subsides, as if they’re emissaries for the day. A chickadee sings his wistful, two-note song.
Snow at first light—a silent mob of moving shadows, pecks on my cheek—then as dawn approaches, the slow differentiation of black and swirling white.
After a night of snow and rain, trees rock and clatter under orange clouds. The roof drips. Scattered flakes swirl past.
Snow falling so fast at sunrise you can hear it: a sort of high soughing as millions of special snowflakes hurtle into the oblivion of each other.
Snow flurries at sunrise. My canvas sleeves become collections of daggers and asterisks—a short-lived museum of the moment.
Overcast at dawn. A cold kiss—snowflakes in the air. When the sunrise comes, it’s only evident in the caws of crows.
Some breaks in the clouds around sunrise. The wail of a fire engine on the wind. Snowflakes drift down.
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.
It’s snowing, fine flakes turning fat and slow—but so many of them, it’s mesmerizing to watch. After a while I look down: I too have been buried.
Sun blazing through the trees illuminates lost snowflakes, miles from the nearest cloud. A chipmunk with hibernation insomnia races up the driveway.