December 15, 2009, journal entry, What Snow Sounds Like

Four miles.

I knew snow was to fall through the night, but I am surprised at the four inches that catch the door I open like my breath in single digit temperatures. I probably should rest today, having run many mornings straight and I need to shovel my driveway path, but this is the first significant snow of Winter.

Five o’clock.

It is early, snowing.

White lights Dark.

I need to find my reflective vest, but I like how in my eggplant-purple Adidas jacket, I am absorbed into the deep-set eyes of morning, blending with dark.

Cracks in dark streets, a horizontal forest of branching, hold inches of snow like a child in a lap.

The light half of the year is still bowing to the dark side. Soon, during Winter’s Solstice ceremony, Sun’s maximum position, low in the sky, will wassail to rebirth, and shadow sprites will flicker about in Her wake like the snow my feet lifts behind me.

Programmed traffic lights flash red and yellow like a blinking television screen as the hour is early.

Sun’s presence ebbs, waits to flow.

~

What Snow Sounds Like

Silence.

The shadow of my stride that darts, shortening and lengthening beneath street lights.

Black absorbing color, neither emitting nor reflecting light.

White’s blending of colors.

Ice.

Not the step of my stride lifting snow like crackling fire.

Not snow plows and shovels scraping concrete that sound like the murmuration of starlings on power lines.

Not the skein of geese, an arrow in the sky.

Not the intake and outtake of my breath.

White frost that collects on my black scarf in movement.

The water droplets of my breath in cold air.

~

Snow
falls on snow—
and remains silent. (Santoka haiku)

GL, 12/15/2009. Prevail.