This body of air is raging around everything

All that holds against it has never looked so solid and still

It seems the whole world is surging up,

and all that has ever grown up from the earth bows its head, and waits for the storm to pass.

The wind screams through the land.

What was once invisible and only felt, each fluctuation now outlined in white,

as a great, formless beast racing around,

around there, There!

Gusts building to greater and greater intensity—

The greatest ghost.

Against the window—snow collected and battered as splatter paint,

But the wind doesn’t let it stick much,

Instead carrying it in everlasting battle.

That which has fallen in a moment of calm is yanked up again as dust, as smoke,

Picked up to join the magnificent white masses, only broken by straying flakes,

Pulled as a clustered herd of sheep, or by a magnet

Moving jarringly, slowly, in every which direction, colliding with each other or the wind or the earth in a violent chaos.

The window screen quivers, the tinsel shivers, the leaves that remain are screaming.

Parts of the earth are beaten down, just visible under the barest coats of frozen white, exposed to the fury of the wind.

The rest piles up in elegant bodies, defying laws that bind all other substances,

Great waves frozen in place, beautiful sculptures capturing scenes of arching movement.

It is all untouched.

Everything you see outside is blurred white.

The Christmas lights shine on.

Nothing stirs against the great tide. No one is outside.

All plans are whisked away, swept off to the wrath of this almighty being.

All creatures hide away to their homes

cold, and quiet,

in respect for the winter storm outside.