Tuesday, January 30, 2024

On This Winter Day

 


When a wide blue sky towers over

a winter day extreme cold prevails

irrespective of the beaming sun's

filtered fingers illuminating the forest

canopy finding its way through the

network of naked branches to glance

piercingly off snow packed on the

forest floor, as opposed to the relative

mildness that prevails on a pewter sky 

day, shielding the sun. On this day

the sun shone, casting long shadows

in mid-afternoon. On such days even

a slight breeze lifts and turns paper-thin

foliage stubbornly clinging on those

immature oak, beech and hornbeam

standing their place among the fir

pine and hemlock in this woodland

where days of snow events are

punctuated with freezing rain tamping

down the snowpack to a hard crust.

Down in the valley of the forested

ravine migration-averse robins alight

by the steadily streaming creek in

their search for food, and somewhere

above, chatter chickadees and a lone

nuthatch, birds of the boreal forest.

 

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