Lo. sifted through the winds that blow,
Down comes the soft and silent snow,
White petals from the flowers that grow
In the cold atmosphere.*
It’s snowing and blowing like crazy. All day long the flags have been overworked, stretched out to their snapping points, straining in the stiff breeze, ends fraying. This snow is so different from the last stuff we had. Then it was fat and wet and lazy and perfect for packing. This is more like diamond dust. It’s dry and granular and it blows up against everything in great drifts and piles and ridges of frozen airy weightless white sand. In the streetlights it glitters and shimmers nonstop, a constantly shifting and sifted sugarpane.
It was “fun” driving home from work tonight, after all the weather-report-hype: roads closed! trucks in ditches! traffic snarlups! freezing rain! and the blowing, blowing, blowing of the winter wind. The usually 10-minute drive home took only about half an hour, not nearly as bad as I was fearing, and the highway was actually fine in the direction I was heading. Despite the snow snakes slithering across the blacktop and the long congo line of red lights ahead of me, it was steadily moving. The plows can’t keep up though, and it’s the little residential areas off the beaten path that suffer; we rarely get plowed back in our neighborhood and going around each wiggly turn fishtails the car just enough to be exciting.
I was last home, and the warm lights in the windows beckoned. The kids were out romping in the snow with the next-door-collie Max. The blowing snow got in every possible crevice of their clothing. They came in wet and clammy and icy cold from snow down the back of their pants and in their boots and between their hats and their heads. They also came in with strawberry cheeks, sparkling eyes and electric grins that could power up a small city.
Cracking Me Up: 3 and 8
Really Great Writing & More Out There Right Now: Indigo Leaf Magazine
Laughing So Hard It Hurts (and the thing is: it REALLY HURTS): Bush on Zork
*George W. Bungay, The Artists of the Air