Wind lacks clarity. It turns the snowy yard into a sort of desert: un-skiable, pine-needle-covered grass shows at one end, but raspberry bushes and currants lie buried at the other. There’s no way to tell what has happened, how many inches have fallen, the evidence all up in the air continuously turning.
It is so cold I cannot gather snow. Can’t shape it into a small world, packed between my gloves, then destroy it like an angry god; can’t roll it into three large worlds, stack them, and call it a man.
I wonder what my dog thinks. She brings winter in on long toe-hairs, accretions of ice and dirt from the road, like the nuclei of tiny comets that drop off and melt on the hardwood. Does she think this is the way things will be now—this constant rattle at the windows, the cold—or recognize it for what it is: a temporary lean away from the sun?
