Love the Creek

All around the immediate homestead area at Kline Creek Farm is, naturally, a meandering creek. Walking the shortcut to the house and later walking back to to parking lot allows pictures of winter in all its beauty. Snow, bare trees, reflections from the creek. Some truly beautiful winterscapes.

The images reminded me of a poem I wrote back in the 1980s when I looked out at the peaceful vista of a snow-draped night. Until the plow -- a representative of my world, busy, hustling and bustling and headed for work -- destroyed the silence. Here it is:

MESSAGE OF THE SNOW

Identically unique peace crystals
Thunder noiselessly down
Draping gutters, towers, garages, flowers
Softening all harsh angles, smoothly blanketing all
Under a shawl, purely innocent white.
Final finishing flake tingles under
Soft glow of wintry light;
Twinkle of stars above refracts
Sprinkle of silent light in the snow.

Hush! Say nothing! Listen instead
To the depth of the syrupy silence;
Listen to the perfection of peace surrounding us

Listen
Until

Distant
Buzz
Angry
Bee
Chopping through
Scraping
Slamming
Straining
Carving the road
Engine roars
Lights flash
Red
White
Orange
Snow flies
Crunching into heaps
Slapping onto piles
Cars follow
Traffic whizzes
Surging past the
Crusty piles
Blackened sooty chunks
Garbage snow --
Ignored
In its
Cindered
Ugliness