Blue Ice and Bears

Ice-locked at the big goose egg. The TV weather people can't bring themselves to say "zero." As if it's an embarrassing sports score in a town where the news is weather and sports.

Or they're trying to be cheekier than the next weather person, who might say zero and be perceived as not being sporting about it, as not having provincial pride about how we talk about the weather, even though it's what everyone is talking about.

Besides football. Today. It's good weather for bears.

Ice crunched up at the shore. Further out, thin sheets of it, so thin they are blue, the real color of blood before it hits the air. In between, a river flowing east, not liking what it sees and moving on.