A walk with my wife in a late snow during a pandemic

All day it snowed, even though there were lawns hazed with the purple of a thousand little blooming crocuses. Minnesota doesn't care about flowers or seasons or where the water goes or how it comes down. And why should it. Minnesota knows what it's doing. It always has.

So when it was finally snowing less, my lovely wife and I went out walking. Crunch is the sound it made. We slipped at first because it has been Spring for awhile, then we didn't slip because it hasn't been Spring for that long.

All around us people died in hospitals unable to breathe, and businesses went under and people wondered how to pay rent or how they were going to afford to get food next week. 

But we mostly saw robins. Fat robins.

Down a hill, in a little vale that runs to a waterfall, the trees were loaded with wet snow. It was a dazzling maze, dark and white, complex and wonderful.

"Look." We said.

And so we both did.