frozen silence.
but for the rustle of breeze
against dry grass.
snow will come,
and a crust of snow
will settle in crystalline
interlock with the brown stalks.
the snow will absorb sound,
muffling reality,
until nothing remains but
frozen silence.
a full four seasons, from snow to sweaty t-shirt: one mountain pass
From a stove-heated room, the snow brightens one's mind with hope that all will be made clean, but cleanliness is next to nothingness and nothingness is next to loneliness. From inside, snow is silencing and light. It's fine and shifts like sand in desert dunes. It's silent like the depths of a cabin at midnight on the prairie before time. From outside, snow saps all of one's resolve, and makes one wish to flee the purity it pretends to generate all around. The cold, it bites like a full-body vice. The feet go numb, but brains... they fire wildly -- they shake one awake, but dare one to sleep.
well-trodden snow is checked with long shadows from the afternoon sun
the tallest peak catches the rising sun, & glows pale orange
the crunchy snow of a cold winter's eve -- tomorrow's gray slush
I walked a snowy street, quietly as the falling snow, a snow that melted under foot, not one that crunched - compacting. Everything was deadened by that not-so-cold snow, a snow that swallowed sound, a snow that would have shunned light -- had there been any to shun. But it was night, and I was walking in the snow.
I
snow white mountain
orange in the morning sun
gray under clouds
II
a southern cat
learns to move through the snow —
never to repeat
III
in the fresh snow
a single set of tracks
curve to the left
Tiger Riding for Beginners 