It is February. It is cold. Things are frozen.

Some complain about it, but I am taken by the blazing light bouncing off the snow, and make attempt after attempt to capture the glittery sparkle in a photo. It’s so obvious to the human eye, while the camera lens remains oblivious, or even willful in rejecting it.

No glitter. A poem instead.

Friends From California Ask About the Snow

It’s in the front yard and finds me
without my climbing mountains,
the bright clean page of it
written over with the history
of the morning’s drag-foot deer,
passing rabbit, tracking cat,
and the conundrum of squirrels
that seem to travel backward,
deep hind footwells, paired
to tiny forepaw prints
but in front of them,
then a space, a leap,
and a double question mark:
why are they out in the snow
away from their warm nests,
not even searching for stash,
dusted with glitter
in a landscape made for sleeping,
but to be improbably glorious
in a wide open world.