After weeks of bare lawns and empty flower beds, dusted occasionally by snow traces that washed out immediately in rain, here it is, finally: snow, decorating the trees, blanketing the yard, and multiplying the light of the sky. My reward for winter. It was in the weather forecast several times without materializing, a gift withheld. I woke to it yesterday morning like a promise kept. Winter without snow in Michigan was just wrong, so when it came, even those who most complained about it had a certain level of relief. Things were going as they were supposed to go.

The snow exaggerates the shapes of some things, gives definition to others.

It plays games with light, at night as well as in the daytime.

It shook the last of the crabapples out of the trees and laid them out on the snow for the deer.

I’ve written many poems about snow since I moved here to be with Doug. In California snow was beautiful but far away – up there on the mountains, something I could see but not touch. Now here it is all around me, all the brightness and beauty of it up close. And yes, that’s a metaphor.