Morning. I awake in my la-z-boy chair. (As usual, I’d spent the last third of the night there.) Slowly I squint with one eye — just enough to see the digital clock. Isn’t the world usually brighter by now? I open the eye. And then the other. There is a strangely soft light this morning. I look out the window.

Like a bride at her wedding, this morning is garbed in white. A dress of new snow covers the ground, A gauzy veil of white fog hides the glow on the face of the newly risen sun and white fluffy clouds decorate the western sky.

Moments later, I exit the garage with food and water for the cats. (Critters eat first.) Corporal runs to greet me. Careful how I step. (There is ice on the driveway beneath a thin sheet of snow.) Corporal rubs against my leg. I bend and give her some skritches behind her ears. She loves that and tells me so with a contented purr. Soon all the cats are fed and petted. Except Pepe who keeps his distance.

I walk around the house to the nearly empty bird feeder. The newly fallen snow crunches beneath my boots. It’s a pleasing sound.

Diamonds of rime encrust the branches of the crab apple trees reflecting and refracting the rays of the early sun and adding glints of luster to the scene. Sparkling diamonds everywhere.

High, very high, in the deep blue of the eastern sky a jumbo jet races westward. It is the tip of a white-shafted spear. As it passes directly overhead and continues, in the morning stillness I hear the first sound of its approach.

The jet-tipped silver spear races on, westward until it plunges deep into the heart of a cloud bank. It leaves behind only the slowly dissipating evidence of its passing.

Awareness returns. How long have I stood here?

Hey, I’m hungry! Let’s go eat.