Our winter beekeepers meeting canceled, and Mama having left early in anticipation of its arrival, the ice storm blustered and blew and dripped and dropped and chilled and gusted and fogged and fell as I stayed nestled snug as a bug in my little old house, stoking the stove with wood fetched by Sweetheart before he left to go to the great north, and stowed, safe and dry on the covered porch for me, each trip outside to refill the rack that lives next to the old Jotul blowing in gusts of freezing wind to gutter the candles, the power flickering on and off every now and again, the radio crackling school closings, and the great everything spinning away out there in the cold wet dark and me cozy, safe, and dry under a quilt. In the morning, the world was covered in ice. A thin layer of it coating everything and bringing the branches of the trees down to kiss the ground, almost to breaking, but luckily still wick with Autumn’s sap, lithe and strong, and tiny icicles off of every roofline, the old birds nest I just discovered in the hedge, full of snow, it all already starting to melt in the morning’s quiet sun. But for a moment, a silent iceworld, holding its breath, waiting for turkish delight.
Feather By Feather 