Snows out of Season

     Every morning but one in the week after Easter, we have looked out to find our little town covered in snow -- not a lot of snow by western New York standards, but measurable all the same. Saturday morning on my deck, where late and early snows stick easily, my official yardstick reading was 4.5 inches.

     The appearance of these snows can cause irritation, consternation, and wide-spread grumpiness in the local population, especially in these days of the stay-at-home mandate.

I don't know what a snowfall out of season does for you.


But for me the late snow draws me to my window.

 

When the snow stops and the sun reappears,
I always want to grab my camera in hopes I can somehow save this moment of wonder.



Or I find my notebook and try to describe what I see.




Somehow in these days of confinement, these moments never grows old.












In This End is Our Beginning


In these last days before the earth hardens
into its last malleable posture
we wake to find our small world
dappled with snow, its textures
far richer for the white dustings
than the forgetting snows of December.

This is a world we know
even as we learn its contours anew.
Hour by hour as the weakening sun
draws its warming brush wherever
it is not obstructed, the landscape
reemerges, glistening, renewed
even as it dries, its small wonders
beneath our feet quiet as tears.