Snow

Unbelievable winter we are having here in the city.  The above is a photo I took yesterday morning of our latest round of wintry weather.  Heard on the news that we broke a January record here in New York City...a record that has held since they first began keeping track in 1890....and the month is still not over.  Sorry, but enough is enough.  Just can't take much more of the slipping and sliding.  Possibly another 1 to 3 inches on Saturday, and another storm on its way on Tuesday.  

Following are some other photos I took of my neighborhood before I went to work yesterday.  It is so nice to finally have a camera.

(Would you believe that there is a car under there?)

(Or how about this one?)

(Early morning before the sidewalks were shoveled)

(So pretty, isn't it?  Too bad it doesn't stay this way.  By evening all was a dirty, icy mess)

(My backyard bush last year)

(And this year.  Flattened from the heaviness of all the snow.  I wonder if it will survive.) 

Snow

White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly.

The road before me smooths and fills
Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
Are blotted slowly out;
The naked trees loom spectrally
Into the dim white sky.

The meadows and far-sheeted streams
Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere.

Save when at lonely intervals
Some farmer's sleigh, urged on,
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
A sound remote and clear;

The barking of a dog, or call
To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
Falls, settling soft and slow.

The evening deepens, and the gray
Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,
Plod dumbly on, and dream. 

--Archibald Lampman--