Snow
The snow is here.
Everything is sacrificed to the white; first a pavement, then a lane, then the parking spaces are all filled by the vast beasts of snow, lounging like sacred cows, occasionally ingesting the cars not driven; while we, in respect and in fear, sneak and slip cautiously by our new Gods.
On the front line are the elderly, the home guard, valiantly but futilely scraping away the uppermost inches with oversized shovels, a few with snow lawnmowers noisily launching an avalanche arcing into the sky, All waiting for the cavalry in their toy-bulldozers to come bouncing up the road and scrape everything away, carving clean cut walls like archaeological sections down from the grubby top soil to the icing sugar layers below.
The snow is the passed buck, shifted from mine to yours, and yours to his, until eventually it finds its way to the snow dump. This year the dump has filled too and its gates closed. The sea waits nervously.
Snow is a light, dividing the dark armies of trees once lost in the forest, leaving the trunks vulnerable and exposed. Snow illuminates the darkest corners of the kitchen as you wander confused into the light for a midnight glass of water.
The snow deafens; all that is left is the crunch crunch of footsteps, your footsteps, on the cold days creaking like Shackleton's ship being crushed in the ice; on the warm days collapsing with a thump, then icing immediately and slipping your grip, each step becomes untrusted, overcautious and exhausting.
The land grows higher while the walls, benches and bins ever lower. The hush is reverent.
Everything is sacrificed to the white; first a pavement, then a lane, then the parking spaces are all filled by the vast beasts of snow, lounging like sacred cows, occasionally ingesting the cars not driven; while we, in respect and in fear, sneak and slip cautiously by our new Gods.
On the front line are the elderly, the home guard, valiantly but futilely scraping away the uppermost inches with oversized shovels, a few with snow lawnmowers noisily launching an avalanche arcing into the sky, All waiting for the cavalry in their toy-bulldozers to come bouncing up the road and scrape everything away, carving clean cut walls like archaeological sections down from the grubby top soil to the icing sugar layers below.
The snow is the passed buck, shifted from mine to yours, and yours to his, until eventually it finds its way to the snow dump. This year the dump has filled too and its gates closed. The sea waits nervously.
Snow is a light, dividing the dark armies of trees once lost in the forest, leaving the trunks vulnerable and exposed. Snow illuminates the darkest corners of the kitchen as you wander confused into the light for a midnight glass of water.
The snow deafens; all that is left is the crunch crunch of footsteps, your footsteps, on the cold days creaking like Shackleton's ship being crushed in the ice; on the warm days collapsing with a thump, then icing immediately and slipping your grip, each step becomes untrusted, overcautious and exhausting.
The land grows higher while the walls, benches and bins ever lower. The hush is reverent.
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