Morton's Blizzard 2011

Winter’s blizzard blew in and covered roads

and homes and trees-and

filled the local arboretum up with snows

deeper than in many years of the

past.



The white covering blew and flew throughout the

Woods and up hills and over ponds

down paths and up onto a few nests

and down into a couple of holes where fox hid out.

The storm was furious, exhaling in gusts,

some seventy miles an hour,

blowing recognition away its’ breath

showing only whiteness covering the earth,

with quick bursts of high energy that

withstood any attempts to stand upright and rigid in

protest.



So the trees, thousands of them, assorted

varieties, shook and bent and some even snapped

beneath the beating winds, the moist weight upon

their branches. Trees swayed and broke bitterly frozen

upon the ground, exhausted from the beating;

bearing so much snow, so much wind,

some stood silently, others screamed with

falls left over leaves

fluttering to death in voices of outrage.

Animals

currently sheltering beneath these mainstays of life

stoically huddled, nests and tiny bird feet clinging to

branches, held on and hoped for sun to rise soon.



The darkness covered the destruction, staying longer

this night than usual as the skies

clouded from the blizzard refused to release the day

resisting the morning light, gripping the earth, rocking the trees

separating branches and dragging them helplessly

through the shadows scattering them across the fields,

among the paths, around the buildings that huddled along

the ridge overlooking the destruction.



The aftermath revealed the next day were like

the dead upon a battlefield, without medics available.

No trees stood all were at least bent

overwhelmed with the weight of frozen snows,

some trees shattered and splintered; a foot or two of trunk

upright, the rest felled and covered again and again

by deep snow. So life was stopped, inactive, decimated

pieces and pieces of life wrecked and strewn across

the fields and over the paths

and yet despite the cloud filled grey sky,

despite the inability of caretakers to arrive and

heal the wreckage-Spring will resurrect the blossom

and the tree.







Richard W. Smith

February 10, 2011