Blue-Black-On-White

The great vault of this winter sky
shimmers a bright virginal white
instructing and reflecting the
monochromatic landscape below.
The dark pillars of the forest trees
hold up the indistinguishable horizon,
lightness meeting lightness, bearing no
impossible burden like legendary Atlas.

That white vault releases its frozen
burden, swirling atmosphere-dappling
snowflakes absorbing sound, tenderly
blanketing the icebound ground.
The prevailing silence in the grip of
winter's relentlessly frigid presence
elevates the landscape's pristine
beauty to the ultimate genius of
nature's existential design.

Errant wind bursts flick soft snow
clumps from snow-heavy branches.
Birds stir and nestle deeper within
the cold-muffling comfort of enveloping
snow. Foraging animal tracks dimple
and elaborately embroider the
ground's smoothly iridescent covering.

A single crow rises effortlessly on the
grace of the wind's conveyance, alights
on the spire of an ancient pine, its pinions
so dark against the prevailing white they
glow a sheen of darkly bright blue. It sits
there, master of all it surveys, cawing
derisively at the quadrupedal gait of creatures
whom nature disdained to gift with flight.