Soft as powdered sugar, snow sifted down, its dire promise unfulfilled. Wind rustled, and the light shifted. A pile of bricks caught the light and shadows. I felt an inexplicable desire to count those bricks, to make them mine. I had the same acquisitive urge for the birdfeeders and sparse shrubs stripped by deer. Something stirred inside me, like a spurt of heat. Each of the four birdbaths suddenly seemed special, and dozens of sweetgum balls, with their potential for pain, strewn across the patio’s reliable stones. The rock garden where grass would not grow, pushing up its pachysandra and yellow daylilies that will bloom in summer. Fallen branches, each stick and twig, the rough bark on my pine trees—yes, my pine trees— trees that capitulate to nothing, and speckled sparrows that light on the lawn and peck for food, heads bobbing in assent, feathered executives reaching consensus, then lifting in unison as if on signal, up, up into the pines to perch on branches. Though winter lingers, they do not abandon me. Even the chain link fence endures, no matter what has happened here, it grows rusty but endures.