This Challenged Landscape

Myriads of starry fluff billow through
the frozen aspect of a wintry day, like the
infinite glory of stars stippling the Milky Way.
They fall from a soft silver sky, frigidly like the
loftier atmosphere above, over immeasurably
frozen distances beyond our Galaxy into eternity.
There the similarity must end, for these minuscule
stars will melt, and those will collapse into themselves
and disappear into a magnetic black hole.

This is our earthen coil, and whatever enters
our atmosphere is uniquely with the Earth, itself
designed to absorb starry particles of frozen
winter-time precipitation. The landscape has now
been softly veloured by the constantly-falling flurries.
As we stride the snowy forest pathways there is
silence, all sound absorbed by the muted conspiracy
of tree limbs coated in plump white layers,
stumps holding aloft cones of snowed ice-cream.

The forested waterways no longer thrust their
way toward their head-waters; all are solid, stolidly
iced, snow padding their immovable presence.
Everywhere on the frozen surface sugared with a
fine snow sifting appear animal tracks; clear, concise
and recent. Among them those of a duck, who
waddled back and forth, desperately seeking the
refuge and food source of open, running water.

In the far-near distance, nostalgia stirs
restlessly. For there, faint but unmistakable, is
the plaintive assertion of a locomotive steam whistle,
drifting through time and over the timeless snow
covering of this challenged northern landscape.