This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

Macrophotography from The Snowflake, by K. Libbrecht and P. Rasmussen. Drift over to Snowcrystals.com for a field guide to snowflakes.

If I were going to be blues singer, I'd want a name like his...
Wilson "Snowflake " Bentley's early photographic work

In the Snow

by Ethan Gilsdorf

A fresh dust settled
on this snow, unswept,
where rabbits and moles
wrote words with foot, and claw.

Making myself light,
stepping in silence,
I test, a stroke survivor.
Toes drag on the rice paper top.

Each foot I place
in expectation of the drop,
descent through zones
of ice and snow.

This crust either
the first of many tiers,
or the last of every brittle layer
that ever held me up.

But each step
sends me to touch
the earth below,
cold, tiny, slow.

Thin wafers of ice
slice my shins,
erase the animal alphabet
and what it may have said.

Earth, frost-hard,
and this human
pulled to it, knee deep
in obstinate drifts.

Caring less what he ruins,
what's left ahead.
Remains as he walks a poem in winter,
snowbound, and unsolved.

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The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty by Patricia Rasmussen (Photographer), Kenneth George Libbrecht

Snow Crystals by W. A. Bentley (Author), W. J. Humphreys (Author)

When I was a kid we were so poor we had to make our own snow... Snowflakes for all Seasons by Cindy Higham