" Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone...." In the Bleak Midwinter , Christina Rossetti Started writing this on a warm afternoon for February -- the day before another powerfully icy, iron-hardening nature-spraying arrived in Central Virginia. Aside from choosing to postpone a couple of appointments and having some appointments postponed on me, the weather is what I expect from a February -- maybe not in Central Virginia, but of other Winters in my life. When our area was hit last week with a similar storm, I gave myself 30 minutes of alone time to just stare out the back window and take in the whiteness, the stillness. We had had more snow with that system. It wasn't the same as Rossetti's "snow on snow on snow," but I was captivated with the glimmering highlights on the tree branches and appreciated her idyllic capture of a similar scene. But, this week, I came back to "Earth stood hard." Earth usually doesn't stand. It is in constant
Where I write longer things....