Winter Renewed

This week we had such beautiful weather, and yesterday was a little cool, but stiil pleasant.  But by the end of the day, snow was starting to draw its curtain over the world, and by morning, a thick white blanket had changed the landscape from brown and grey to pure white.  It reminded me of a haiku I wrote many years ago:

The sun warms the earth.

Flowers look up.  Is spring here?

But at night, snow falls.

American Tree Sparrow

A Mid-Winter Oasis

A Mid-Winter Oasis

The cold hard door of winter 

Rattles and groans under the weight of ice and snow

Until with a gentle hand, nudging, little by little,

Spring comes.

She taps quietly, insistently,

then eases the door open.

A ray of sunshine peeps in,

A fresh breeze laden with promise.

So brief, like a dream,

Then the door closes softly.

A warm day in mid-winter.

White Feathers

The sleeping earth is blanketed once again.  The soft white coverlet has built up one feather at a time, smoothed and shaped by wind, and now lies unbroken and waiting for the sun's blush.  What will the blank page reveal when morning comes?  Often it shows me what visitors have come in the night, and I laugh at the rabbit tracks and squirrel tracks, the faint scratches of sparrows.  It also conceals, and the shrubs and stones in my yard become indistinct piles and lumps of snow, waiting for warmer weather to be revealed once more.

But for now it's night, and I look out the window at the fresh white crystals encrusting the branches of the larch outside, and hope that the beauty will last until morning.