snow
late afternoon and quiet, empty house. The tree glows in the corner, the only light. Outside, snow begins to fall; gently, huge soft flakes. Big enough to really look like goose down, like feathers shaken from the white, blank sky. The snow gives the light a certain bright, cold quality that shines through the windows, brightening the room without adding any warmth. I can tell it’s snowing just from the light in the room, without needing to look outside. But as I drift in and out of sleep, the light from outside fades and the room warms with colored light. It is warm and I can sense the silencing blankets wrapping the house for the first, and probably only time this winter. Snow never ceases to be magical: mainly here, mainly this time of year when everything is dirty and dark. It covers it all with light, with powder that sticks to the bottoms of my skis as I glide up our street, passing under columns of golden falling snow. The streetlights give each falling flake a shadow, gray and indistinct, then becoming sharper and darker as the snow nears the ground. The flakes themselves are invisible against the white blanket they are joining, only their shadows give them away. and as they finally reach the ground, their shadows are snuffed out like an image on a screen, going from out of focus into sharp relief, then flicked like a light turning out.