I can't sleep…
“Nothing astounding, but everything beautiful.” (Jonathan Buckley, One Boat).
First major snowfall. 5:00 to 5:30 am. 32° F. Heavy snow. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Don’t miss other shots from this morning’s walk here.
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened with milk.
Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch-
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
— Jane Hirshfield, “Not Yet” in “Come, Thief: Poems“. (HarperCollins, April 5, 2011)
Notes: Photo of Red Northern Cardinal on January 1, 2025 by DK at noon in backyard. Poem via having a poem with you.
Let it snow. 11:48 am. 35° F, December 20, 2024. Stamford, CT. Pictures from this morning’s walk: Time Lapse video & Sunrise photos.
Other than that, there was no noise. Not a breath of wind, no birds flying. Around us pure white snow continued to silently fall. What a beautiful scene, I thought. It moved me, in a way. I was sure every detail would remain in my memory, until the moment came when I took my last breath.
— Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. (Trans. Philip Gabriel) (Knopf, November 19, 2024)
Post Inspiration:
2:30 am. Wally is restless, and his tossing and turning had wakened me (again).
I don’t know what pulled me to get up and look out the window. Murakami: “You wordlessly shook your head. But something had happened. I could pick up on it, the delicate sound of wings beating at a decibel beyond a human’s audible range.” And what a surprise it was to see snow.
Murakami’s words didn’t exactly capture my experience this morning with our first snowfall of the season, but it was nonetheless beautiful. The impact of global warming continues to haunt me. I do wonder if our grandchildren will get to experience the beauty of snowfall in winter.
As I rounded the turn on the home stretch of my walk back to the car, the wintry mix turned to heavy rain and the snow was melting as quickly as it had arrived. Murakami: “The days passed, the seasons changed. Yet days and seasons are but temporary things…Human beings are as insubstantial as an exhaled breath, and what they do in their lives is but a moving shadow.”
More photos from this morning’s walk can be found here.
Photo above was taken at 3:12 am. Snow mixed with heavy rain. 32° F, feels like 22° F, wind gusts up to 37 mph. November 22, 2024. Cove Island Park. Stamford, CT.
1st snowfall of 2024. 33° F, wind gusts up to 20 mph. 7:15 to 7:45 pm. January 6, 2024. More photos from this evening’s walk at Cove Island Park here.
A wee bit of relief from the anxiety tied to “The End of Snow“