Winter's Ghosts

The carefully calibrated measure
of winter's passage these months
has layered itself seamlessly on 
the frozen landscape, like growth
rings on forest trees. Making note
of the various degrees of frigid
temperatures overlaid with the snow
events, minor and major, freezing rain,
snow fog and the overlaid artistic
effects of the erratic, autocratic wind.
Compressed crystals of snow
sandwiched neatly between smoothly
glimmering slides of ice have built
their seasonal highway on the land.
Today's light snow is relentlessly
harassed and bullied by an icy gale
lifting veils of sheer ectoplasm,
like the tenderly delicate
ghosts of winters past.