Ideal

Rain is washing away the last of the snow, which retreats as though already spring were driving it into the streams and soil- but it is only a lessening of the still deep cold which mimics the sun's power all the dark night. The sounds are soft now, drips and trickles as vague as distant bird songs, or the lapping of deer at a freshened pond. This stream of aimless music carries my hours off to the gray pool dawn spreads into the sky. I have drifted thoughtless with them, as though I could believe that all the clocks had stopped forever.

( Sunday Verse )

Flop!

The snow came back as I slept. I knew this even before I opened my curtains to reveal the re-whitened world. I woke to the sound of clumps falling from the branches onto the roof, like small, distant explosions. The intermittent rain has once again removed most of it from the trees, but the bare branches of the oaks are still outlined with white, and a bit clings to the dense foliage of the few firs nearby. I have spent the afternoon thinking how, a few thousand feet above my head, sunlight is gleaming on the more brilliant white of these clouds which roof my view with gray slate, obscuring the bright and vivid blue dome of day. I inhabit a dim, chilled world that resounds with trickling and the calls of persistent birds. I do not like the snow.