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 were
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.