The Silvered Winter Moon

Venus and Jupiter and the silvered Moon rise low on the horizon. The winter air is bitter cold; so cold that the nose and toes ache and standing still is a silly thing to do. Yet this is a Texas Winter, not a Toronto cold; nor even a Canadian frost, nor lake effect snow piling pile upon pile; just cold assaulting blood thinned by too many hot Texas days. I would rather see my breath frosting in cold air, and hear my footsteps crunching dry snow across a tree hemmed field knee deep in snow, and clean fresh air, and hot cider. 

There have been other snowy nights long ago in that northern city on the edge of the frozen lake; the snow shawling down out of the sky like a great blanket covering the streets, the parked cars, the sidewalks; covering all the dust and dirt of the city, white now at least for a day or two. A silent hush falls over the city, even the passage of the occasional car slipping and sliding through deeply rutted tracks in middle of the streets is muffled. Snow swirls around the lights glittering like miniature falling gemstones. There is not only silence, but freshness in the air, clean, cold, invigorating, so chilled that one wraps a scarf around the face to soften the harshness of each breath. 

In my memory we climb the step to our third floor apartment stamping snow off our feet on each of the lower steps. Not only boots are frosted, even the socks are covered with crystalline ice. Once into our apartment, shoes and socks will be left just inside the door. Now, warm slippered, we look down from our window at the white world beneath and snow falling snow on snow. But in the middle of the night throughout the centre city where we live we hear the sound of snowploughs. Not only the streets are ploughed, but even the sidewalks. The snow is carted off leaving only a frozen icy residue, but even that is not safe from the predatory trucks spreading salt before the morning rush hour.