Hoarfrost rimes the morning when the sun has scarcely cleared the line of trees & the temperature barely touches zero. Pink-gold light scatters through branches into the blue air.
I follow rabbit tracks until they stop abruptly at a wide flattened spot in the snow: the owl leaves no footprints,
The way loss leaves no physical marks upon the body & yet something soft & warm is gone.
The world, coated in ice. Crystal drops on branches, weighing down each leaf until the beech tree is frozen, crying.
**
All the moss glazed, pellucid beads strung along each seta.
Seed posts encased, shining. Mushrooms wearing sparkling diadems of ice.
A wind gusts through the trees, chorus of minute cracklings as ice breaks apart on moving branches.
— Michele Heather Pollock From Field Guide to the Art of Looking: a year wandering the Brown County woods.
34 Our Brown County • Jan./ Feb. 2021