Hauling wood, tending fire, attending...

Gray sky yesterday, then afternoon snow and into evening, and then the sky cleared. Tonight is full moon. Oh, the light. "The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow / gave a luster of midday to objects below."

My friend Dana Knighten writes: "Out my office windows, I can see the serge blue light of the moon on the scrim of snow that lies over these rounded hills.  Lights twinkle from a few new houses recently built on the old farmland across the road, lights and signs of human habitation where, only a few months ago, there were none.  Snow like cotton batting blankets the slant of the angled glass windows over my office window seat, and the thermometer reads 10 degrees.  The woodstove has been going nonstop now for a week.  In it burns wood from one of our own oaks, a big one that stood at the southern edge of our yard, which some fungus killed a few years ago.  The tree fell in one of last fall's storms, and Dave sawed it into sections and split it back in November.  Daily, I have been hauling wood, keeping the brick floor swept of all the crumblies that fall off the rotten chunks, tending the fire."