The Power of One

Teasel, bent at fence

Frozen

Mailboxes in the Morning

Mounds line the edges of the roads, a crusty ridge, where Wednesday’s snow was left by the township plow--a small truck with a blade. The face through the frosted windshield, the grown version of a boy I remember seeing on the playground, years ago, behind the small school at the end of the road. Not much by measure, the snow, probably less than 6 inches—but able to close down this community and most around it, in a single snowfall. The boy, now man, splitting time behind the wheel of fire truck and plow, an integral part of this rural landscape.

Ice on Golden Alexanders

With a shortage of salt this year, county roads are barely passable, the accumulation, hardened now by traffic, into dense, immovable ice. Schools have been closed for several days, businesses empty of their patrons.
And the open farm fields, that rarely disappear entirely beneath white, are trimmed by drifts extending across the ditches with graceful, wind-carved arms.

Snow on Pasture Grass

Like the dunes at the edges of the oceans, where countless grains rest and nestle together, strong until just one is dislodged--then broken and blown on the wind.

When our fields wear white, I wander,
and search until I find just one.
So fragile,
so fleeting,
so powerful,
that I would hold my breath to save it.

Can you see just one?

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