Poem for Friday and Bellevue Shopping

First Snow 

By Mary Oliver 

The snow

began here

this morning and all day

continued, its white

rhetoric everywhere

calling us back to why, how,

whence such beauty and what

the meaning; such

an oracular fever! flowing

past windows, an energy it seemed

would never ebb, never settle

less than lovely! and only now,

deep into night,

it has finally ended.

The silence

is immense,

and the heavens still hold

a million candles, nowhere

the familiar things:

stars, the moon,

the darkness we expect

and nightly turn from. Trees

glitter like castles

of ribbons, the broad fields

smolder with light, a passing

creekbed lies

heaped with shining hills;

and though the questions

that have assailed us all day

remain — not a single

answer has been found –

walking out now

into the silence and the light

under the trees,

and through the fields,

feels like one.

-------- 

We got a little more snow overnight on Friday, but the real weather news here was the temperature -- low 20s, wind chill in the teens. We were surprised to see hummingbirds hanging around the deck in the morning, so we kept bringing the feeders in to warm them and we turned on holiday lights on the deck because we'd read that those can help keep the nectar warm -- they don't hibernate, but they go into torpor and slow their respiration and heart rate, and icy nectar can stun them. 

Paul only had to work half a day because of the holiday weekend, so after lunch and a post office visit, we went to Crossroads Bellevue, a shopping center with an enormous food court that made us wish we'd waited to eat! We stopped at the Hallmark store's post-holiday sale (ornaments and holiday socks 75% off so now I have this year's Loki, and mini tanagers to make into earrings) and at QFC (holiday candy also 75% off), plus World Market (lots of food and home items on sale)! 

After dinner -- chick pea stew, for the weather -- we watched the season finale of For All Mankind, which was fast-paced and stressful and did not pull the one thing I expected all season, namely a Big Asteroid Disaster, though I was disappointed that a couple of character stories got no proper resolution; maybe next season. Then we watched the new Reacher, which is all terrible vigilante violence and I don't know why I'm watching. Now it's more White Collar which I like so much better!