Graupel

“To win all the tricks by a vole.” —Alexander Pope

Drifting snow, snow that blurs the edges of the world again so that all I can think of this morning is how fragile the line between beauty and sorrow. Here is the edge of glass, here is the cold screen mesh, here is the print on the frame. A snow dervish whirls on the side of the road and travels a dozen feet before collapsing. How the little ghosts of dog roses and hellebores rise like wraiths from the ground as if to spite us, how beneath the John Clare roses, the Burgundy Icebergs and the Brittens, their plain clustered heads more deeply touch me. Just yesterday, a child no older than my own rose in the morning to rinse her face— did she tether a scarf around her neck to go into the day, did she go down her front walk and ride into town, one arm of the sky’s burnished parenthesis drawing her closer, back to the day of her birth? Drifting snow, just deep enough to provide cover for voles. Drifting snow, drifting through channels; later, battering our windowpanes with pellets of ice.

—Luisa A. Igloria
01.09.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.