This morning I went out to see if the small dark animal that jumped into the bush beyond my study window left tracks in the snow. It did — a bit bigger than cat tracks and scuff marks of a tail behind them. I thought, oh, I’ll go later and take a photograph. But now everything is white with about 3 more inches of new snow. It’s beautiful. We don’t have to go out, we have lots of food, good wine, a few bottles of single-malt for nightcaps. John filled the woodbox. The fire’s warm. A day to work on yet another essay and to read poetry. Gary Snyder always knows what to say:
A few light flakes of snowFall in the feeble sun;Birds sing in the cold,A warbler by the wall. The plumBuds tight and chill soon bloom.
They weren’t warblers I heard earlier but chestnut-backed chickadees, dark-eyed juncos, the insistent towhees, and a sapsucker who chirred in the arbutus after glancing off a window.
...Theresa Kishkan 