Thursday's Snow Storm and Spring's Purification

Thursday and Friday we had a pretty big snow storm. By Friday afternoon (which was Andy's birthday by the way), the sun was out and Andy had shoveled the driveway. It was hard to say how much accumulation we really got because it was so heavily drifted and it melted so quickly after the sun came out on Friday. Here are a few photos of E eating and playing in the snow. She would have stayed outside eating snow all afternoon, but I put the kabash on the fun and games when her little hands were good and red and frozen.

Below the snow day photos, is a poem my friend sent me last week. It's about Spring and I think it compliments the photos well. Besides, I've enjoyed rereading it daily as the words reset my perspective...

A PURIFICATION

At start of spring I open a trench

in the ground. I put into it

the winter's accumulation of paper,

pages I do not want to read

again, useless words, fragments,

errors. And I put into it

the contents of the outhouse:

light of the sun, growth of the ground,

finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,

and to the faithful trees, I confess

my sins: that I have not been happy

enough, considering my good luck,

have listened to too much noise,

have been inattentive to wonders,

have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse

of mind and body, I close the trench,

folding shut again the dark,

the deathless earth. Beneath that seal

the old escapes into the new.