lines imprinted on snow

lines imprinted on snow --

scrawling scribbles of bird feet,

wing feather brush strokes,

dot-dash deer tracks, squirrel lozenges --

white on white calligraphy

Every day I go out to the yard to read the news -- the record of foot prints imprinted on the canvas of snow. 

Deer leave dot-dash strokes where their heart-shaped hooves punch and drag in long lines, out from the woods, across the open space to the corner of the fence where I leave apples, and into the trees again. 

A squirrel, descending from a tree trunk, hops in a triple pattern of an oval above two little lozenges, stopping at a spot to dig under the snow for hickory nuts. 

Ground-feeding birds meander in complicated curves as they search for seesds dropped by other birds flying away from the bird feeders.

This pattern of bird tracks looks like a caricature of a spider monkey.

And this combination of bird feet and wing brush strokes looks like a bas-relief of a mythical dragon or the skeleton of an extinct pterodactyl.

Today, with temperatures finally climbing above freezing after many weeks, the crisp white-on-white calligraphy is blurring as the crystalline surface softens into a more impressionistic painting.