Landscape

The landscape-sodden lenses
of our eyes freeze that surprising
frame. Frozen with surprise at
nature's impetuous mischievous
spontaneity. One moment an
sensuously benign arras, the next
a thumping wind ravaging the tops
of winter-bare trees, sending them

into precarious companionship
knocking steeples, showering
the ground below with an offering
of shattered green-needled limbs.
Episodic ruptures of the peace
observed on a mild winter's day
succumbing to another weather
system moving through with

sudden squalls, snow so thickly
reeling into the landscape, shoved
this way and that by the
commanding winds, everything
becomes invisible; a moving,
flecked sheet of icy crystals
transforming everything into a
blaze of white conformity.

The ferocity of the wind soon
has us snow-plastered, moving
like silent alien creatures -
through a landscape of primal
atmospheric conditions -
intent on securing survival.