Snow Day

We woke up yesterday morning to a winter wonderland of snow. We finally got our big snowstorm, closing down the schools,  federal government,  libraries, canceling flights. It was an icy snow, and the plows didn't come round our neighborhood until last night. People were outside all day, though, kids playing, people shoveling, using the snowblowers. We decided that dogs have the most fun in the snow--so fun to watch them running free and playing in the snow!  We had a real crowd in late afternoon, when a car got stuck in front of our house, and the whole neighborhood turned up to help. There was another few inches of snow in the evening, and today all is calm.

Shoveling Snow, by Kirsten Dierking

If day after day I was caught inside

this muffle and hush

I would notice how birches

move with a lovely hum of spirit,

how falling snow is a privacy

warm as the space for sleeping,

how radiant snow is a dream

like leaving behind the body

and rising into that luminous place

where sometimes you meet

the people you've lost. How

silver branches scrawl their names

in tangled script against the white.

How the curves and cheekbones

of all my loved ones appear

in the polished marble of drifts.