Snow falling from an almost clear sky: scintillations small as pin-pricks drifting on the icy breeze. The crisp chirps of foraging juncos.
snowflakes
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.
Cold and overcast. The wind eddies around the house, bringing first a few snowflakes, then the distant mechanical gargle of an engine brake.
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.
Snow showers: small flakes melting on contact with the ground. Only an old spiderweb on the porch preserves them, these ephemeral flies.
Weak sun threading through the trees. The glint of microscopic flakes makes the air seem metallic. A white-throated sparrow’s wavering song.
A classic snow shower—the air filled with fat, slow-moving flakes—peters out, followed by more flakes blowing like dandruff off the trees.
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.
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.
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.
Cold and quiet but for the muffled cries of squirrels mating or fighting in the springhouse attic. A dozen snowflakes wander into the yard.
A scurf of fresh snow on the porch. A few flakes linger in the air, darting back and forth as if on reconnaissance missions.
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.
A whitelash of snow against my cheek. I peer at the asterisks melting into my coat, continuing below my chair as a thin footnote.