I had an errand near the lowest part of town, at an elevation some 800 feet lower than my house, and there it seemed so warm that I was tempted to remove my jacket. I didn't, of course. I recall returning to Los Angeles from a few days in San Francisco one December, and it seemed so mild that I went out in shirtsleeves and ended up with a bad cold. I learned that lesson.
But as mild as the low end of town felt compared to this end, the snow has persisted even there. The piney hillsides sported spots of it, and the open fields more, and even a few rooftops of well-insulated houses were at least partly white. On my street, every house still wears a white cap, and even my jasmine hedge is still partly hidden with mounds the leaves haven't been able to shed.
This evening the clear sky has half a moon, and even now that night has fallen the moonlight makes the snow bright. That nocturnal luminance is my favorite thing about snow. If the ice that now underlays it were not so treacherous, I'd go for a walk, but I should content myself with standing for a while on the back porch, watching the moon.
Tonight will be freezing again, and tomorrow will continue cold, but tomorrow night could stay in the mid-thirties, and Wednesday's high might reach fifty degrees. That will be the end of the really cold spell, though I'm sure there will still be some snow on the ground for several days yet. I'm not looking forward to seeing the mass of soggy mulberry leaves that will emerge from the melting snow in the front yard. Once they've been exposed, a few warm, sunny days could dry them enough to make raking them less onerous, but I'm not expecting that. And I'm certainly not looking forward to this month's gas bill.
Because I didn't go shopping yesterday, I forgot that it was Sunday, so here's this:
Belated Sunday Verse
Winter
by R. S. Thomas
Evening. A fire
in the grate and a fire
outside, where a robin
is burning. How they both
sing, offering a friendship
unacceptable to the hand
that is as vulnerable to the one
as it is treacherous to the other.
Ah, time, enemy of their music,
reducing fuel to feathers, feathers
to ash, it was, but a moment ago,
spring in this tinder: flames
in flower that are now embers
on song's hearth.
The leaves fall
from a dark tree, brimming
with shadow, fall on one who,
as Borges suggested,
is no more perhaps than the dream God
in his loneliness is dreaming.
