Wavering Ice

6 am this morning, a Coast Guard helicopter scanning the shore, its beam electrifying the wavering ice. Who would fall? Who would try to run there, with the ice rouging blue? The helicopter thunders away, and a very large truck with four Frogmen leaves the scene, hauling a tiny orange boat.

The same orange Monet used sparingly in his "Water Lilies."

Now Ice

Boxwood hedge is now a small, white dune.

White Ice

Nearly a white-out right now. A Valentine delivered straight out of Oklahoma's panhandle. Can't see much beyond the little boxwood hedge whose planting now seems ridiculous. A small gray patch on the ice draws a few hardy gulls. The dogs' legs disappear in the backyard. Snow blows up against the house; the direction of the wind is everywhere at once.

Sometimes the brain is like this.

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.

Moon Ice

The moon refused to set this morning. Tangled in the branches of the willow. It was 3 degrees outside; 59 degrees inside. On the horizon: piles of cumulous clouds catching first light, as if they were snow-topped mountains. The ice is a full-on stare in the light, starting to ridge up. Waves are slowing to a stop.