Heavy Snow

Snow, on Monday night, was heavy. It fell as tiny flakes, but continuously, all night. And in the morning everything was white, the young trees bowed, unable to shrug off the thick heavy piles of frozen whiteness that had descended onto them. Tiny twigs barely thick as knitting needles supported great tranches of snow, rounded on top like freshly-baked loaves. The conifer outside our kitchen window stood there like a sad teenager with the weight of the world on its shoulders.

Then, through the day, settling. The snow compacted, its weight no longer perfectly evenly distributed, developing a certain brittleness. One by one, leaves, twigs, stems, began, by constant exertion, to shrug off their loads. Out of the corner of an eye: a flurry of falling wet snow and a branch still quivering almost imperceptibly after springing back into its accustomed position. A green sign or a spiky bare finger. An almost audible sigh of relief.