Winter solitude

Darkness fades to blue.
New white smothers the green.
Quietude reigns.
Winged denizens absent from the smorgasbord.
A strobe flashes yellow.
Snowplow advances up Columbia,
Peeling aside the white.
Exposes tarmac black
Stained sandstone brown.

Roaring engine grumble,
Jangle of chains,
Scraping plow;
Piercing the silence.

Rolling down Main,
Quiet restored,
Silence refills the void.

Winter, the season of meditation,
Renewal, restoring,
Readying for rebirth.
Remembering, on a Sunday morning:
22 February.

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February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.

Anna Quindlen