Snow in my Garden

Snow. For the first time in years, there is a lot of it lying outside my window; I mean a lot. And, by all accounts, the main event is due later today: a blizzard on a scale we're not used to. For now though, I'm enjoying this lie in,  gazing out at the new world, pleased to see again our infrequent visitor from Siberia.

Snow in my Garden

The snow lies, bright and silent on my garden;

hedge, woodpile, upturned bucket reduced

to an undulant white suggestion of presence.

I stare, as though in an early stage of amnesia,

enthralled by this suspension of the familiar.

Suddenly a few flakes rise, meander into flight;

a few spiders climbing invisible threads, speckling the air;

then more, more and more till sight is thickly flecked;

zillions escaping into the amorphous sky,

and so it goes for hours, this muffled resurrection.

Till eventually the blades of grass, stiff as hedgehog spines,

are appearing through the thin cover of snow;

the grey air is clearing; and the last flakes are  lifting lazily

into haphazard flight; leaving the hedge, woodpile,

and upturned bucket exactly as before, but somehow, slightly baffled.