Late-winter snow: south of Morgantown, W.Va.

The scene is too beautiful, a Rockwell

straight from "Country Home." Such moments we take

without judgment, and we join the traffic,

moving with a Sunday's benediction.

The ruddy sun, cooling beyond a swath

of shaggy horizon, stretches fingers

into these old hills, humped like the backs

of great drowsing long-gone buffalo.

In this watercolor, snow has sketched log

and trunk and ridgeline, glyphs in black and gray.

Each meadow's a page where deer browse amid

the brushstrokes of our musings.

Taillights string

ruby beads across the hills. We follow,

linking up our little glow. Dark holds off

until our driveway. It seems we have been

gone for years. But one look up at the gables,

the pitch of roof, and we know things - though

a bit worse for wear - are as we left them.

We open the car doors

and the air's kindness surprises.

Around us, spring whispers - soon, soon.