Steady snow from clouds thin enough for the sun to glimmer though. My pants legs are flecked with flakes small and round as grains of salt.
snowflakes
12/27/2017
Snow falling from an almost clear sky: scintillations small as pin-pricks drifting on the icy breeze. The crisp chirps of foraging juncos.
12/10/2017
Snowflakes land on the dog’s thick brown fur and take a long time to melt. I begin to look differently at the brown, snow-dusted hillside.
12/7/2017
Cold and overcast. The wind eddies around the house, bringing first a few snowflakes, then the distant mechanical gargle of an engine brake.
11/10/2017
Among the leaves scudding past the porch, a stray snowflake. A blue seam opens in the clouds to the west where a raven is calling.
4/7/2017
Snow showers: small flakes melting on contact with the ground. Only an old spiderweb on the porch preserves them, these ephemeral flies.
3/16/2017
Weak sun threading through the trees. The glint of microscopic flakes makes the air seem metallic. A white-throated sparrow’s wavering song.
3/3/2017
A classic snow shower—the air filled with fat, slow-moving flakes—peters out, followed by more flakes blowing like dandruff off the trees.
2/16/2017
Bitter blasts of wind, lightly seasoned with snow. One of the trees at the woods’ edge has acquired a loud creak, but I can’t tell which.
1/30/2017
Every cloud brings a scatter of snow. I gaze at the sun’s bright smudge, remembering a 38,000-year-old depiction of a cow stippled in stone.
1/28/2017
A few, wandering flakes slowly build into a snow squall. From my parents’ back porch, the “towhee” call of a towhee that hasn’t gone south.
1/5/2017
Cold and quiet but for the muffled cries of squirrels mating or fighting in the springhouse attic. A dozen snowflakes wander into the yard.
12/30/2016
A scurf of fresh snow on the porch. A few flakes linger in the air, darting back and forth as if on reconnaissance missions.
12/9/2016
A few snowflakes scud past. The dried blades of cattail next to the springhouse rattle and hiss. A dead leaf on the road flips over.