The Silence of Snow

01.25.2011 | HMMH |

We’re having yet another snowstorm this morning in Boston.  And while the moms at the gym are complaining about kids being home from school (again), and the kids are up early because there’s no school (again), I’m struck (again) by the power of nature to enforce a bit of quiet on us all.

So I’ll somehow get my work done from home, but take a few minutes to step outside into the wondrous quiet that is so hard to find in our lives.

HOW IS IT THAT THE SNOW

How is it that the snow
amplifies the silence,
slathers the black bark on limbs,
heaps along the brush rows?

Some deer have stood on their hind legs
to pull the berries down.
Now they are ghosts along the path,
snow flecked with red wine stains.

This silence in the timbers.
A woodpecker on one of the trees
taps out its story,
stopping now and then in the lapse
of one white moment into another.

— Robert Haight