A winter morning in the South Carolina High Country
And snow swirls in a saber sharp wind.
The Piedmont broken underneath the elevation sits like a puzzle with missing pieces beneath us--shrouded in the shadows of a moody day.
The modest peaks of granite and gneiss –Table Rock, Pinnacle, Caesar’s Head and White Sides-- lie partially nude in the winterscape-mounds of rock and soil bared to the dimming gray of a snow-heavy sky.
The shadows covering valley and ridge lie heavy like a cloudy quilt but with no warmth or comfort to come.
Crevices carved by storm and trickle trace the path of creeks and rivers soon to be fed flake by icy flake
Armies of oaks and hickories stand bone bare – dormant and gray as the day--waiting on spring to release the life within
Ridges hold the green-pines twisting in the sudden storm while clouds on a jetstream ply the parting blue above -- A raven—black as a pit and croakless too oared against the onslaught as vulture and redtail rode the same updrafts to advantage
Then-sudden as lightning and almost as quick—a feathered form slicing across the in between –traveling –peregrinating-
a falcon and then a pair—perched on rock to survey the same as me
No longer cold and warmed by the want of wild and feathered things
I welcomed winter—late though she may be
