Snow piles up on branches, as if the white sky were descending on a chaos of ladders. Only a woodpecker’s soft tapping breaks the silence.
snowstorm
Snow falling faster than it can melt. Unto every one that hath shall be given, says the sky: hawthorn and bridal wreath now twice as white.
Snow in progress: curtains that fall and fall until they become the show itself. A nuthatch like a prompter—its anxious calls.
A blue jay lands on a snow-laden branch and the branch breaks. An early snowstorm is like a too-hard eraser that tears holes in the page.
The snow-plastered chairs are huddled at the end of the porch like sheep, and the end-table has lost its top. I pull two hoods over my hat.
Foot-deep drifts across the porch, and the western ridge is plastered white. Above the snow-banshees, I hear blue jays calling.
Wind-whipped snow. I imagine a pep-talk in the cloud nursery: You’re a star! You’re unique! And no mention of gray mounds in a parking lot.
A spotlight from the other house gives me my first good look at the new landscape: soft focus and unlikely curves like a Playboy centerfold.
How much better than dealing with website woes, to sit out here and watch the snow swirl—a dance of a thousand veils backlit by the sun.
The snow’s blowing from the east; I’m quickly covered. With my new white fur I will go crouch over a rabbit’s burrow, Nanook of the South.
Snow! Snow snowing on snow. Snow snowily snows. Snowy, snowier, snowiest snow. Snow snow snow! (Ice? No.)
Steady sift of snow whitening every twig. But my eye is drawn to the one small patch of lawn grass left in the yard, those brave green tips.
At first light, I can’t get over the strangeness of a white ground below an opaque wall of woods. It’s magical, yes, but not in a good way.
The hush of snow against leaves like soft brushes playing on the skin of a drum. A chickadee calls, and then a nuthatch. Dee dee. Yank yank.