Blizzard.

Yes indeed. Twenty-plus inches of snow, every single piled inch of it hard-won versus a ripping wind that blew all night long. And that same wind -- which sheered and shoved and elicited an octogenarian's creaks and groans from a still-green five year old house as we tried to sleep inside it, and turned a Do Not Enter sign in the school parking lot into a completely flabbergasted weathervane -- also gently curled fine, feather-soft snow into this delicate shape only God could perfect.

I shoveled for hours this morning, and as I tried to take this picture my hands trembled and dipped uncontrollably until I climbed up on the kitchen counter, stuck my feet in the sink, and propped my elbows on my knees.

Girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

The neighborhood shovels out
in the waning storm;
a band of anonymous forms
in dark, hooded parkas,
scarves obscuring faces,
but all still familiar to one another,
and quietly, good-naturedly united
against ton after ton
of the billowing white enemy.

Robert Frost would write a poem -
a sequel of sorts, I'd think.
We don't mend walls;
we move snow,
and we do it together.
And this is friendship
drawn in muscle
and boots
and frosty breath.