icing sugar

The snow grows ever more compact beneath the weight
of deeply profiled bulky winter boots, I hear it crunch
with each step I so carefully lay down from heel to toe
on the ground; I feel its coy vibration ripple through the girth
of my soles. The crunch is forceful at first, energetic,
yet all the same rounded towards the end –

a delicate and velvety crunch akin to a nacho
nabbed by an overgenerous sprinkling of
extra mature Cathedral City. Some steps I take
are louder, others completely mum.

I wonder if I took my boots off, would it crunch equitably,
or would the white powder thaw under the heat of my naked feet?

Every so often,

I stop

literally

in my tracks

and linger,

barely daring to forge ahead into the unscathed sheath of blanche
so augustly lit by the full moon. The flocons, as we call them in French,
sluice down in soupçons – they so differ from the violent kerplunk
of raindrops slapping onto concrete. These tiny white hexagons
dance a silent dance of oscillation, moving back and forth,
twirling round one another without ever touching,
gradually fading into the background to make room
for a ceaseless encore. The rain prefers to tap dance.

Tainted by its graceful fragility, the rate at which the snow
dwindles down seems scarce. Still, I soon find myself
veiled in an accumulation of minuscule gratings of nature’s finest:
uniform, but each and every flake that propels its way downwards
from the sky has been exquisitely sewn to the last detail, sui generis.

Though when intricacy turns into an assemblage,
the elaborateness and delicacy somehow begin to fade.

I am draped in a blanket of lace.

Overnight the softness graduates
into a crisp frost,
and the ebb and flow
of the deluge of snow

comes

to a slow

halt.