Linda Baie is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup at TeacherDance.
Snow arrived after dark yesterday. I could hear it falling all through the night and could not wait to see what the farm and valley would look like – this, my first winter here. The rumble of snow plows began before dawn, alerting us to the possibilities of the day. By the time there was morning light, there was enough snow to blanket everything in sight: the barns, house, valley, and hills all around us.
Snow continues to fall, and the landscape seems altered, magical. Gnarled old trees, a tumbled down barn in the distance, even the road that winds down our hill, through the village, and across the valley, are winter’s changelings. I feel as though I’m seeing all that’s loved and familiar with new, more appreciative eyes.
Winter will undoubtedly come to be experienced with less celebration as the North Country months of endlessness go by. At the moment, however, I am reveling in first snow.
First Snow by Mary Oliver
The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what the meaning; such an oracular fever! flowing past windows, an energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle less than lovely! and only now, deep into night, it has finally ended. The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold a million candles, nowhere the familiar things: stars, the moon, the darkness we expect and nightly turn from. Trees glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields smolder with light, a passing creekbed lies heaped with shining hills; and though the questions that have assailed us all day remain — not a single answer has been found – walking out now into the silence and the light under the trees, and through the fields,
feels like one.