The snow falls wet and cumbersome, its weight bending branches. We bang shovel blades against the boughs, and flurries cascade onto our heads. A small girl pulls a sled to the almost-hill behind our house, stops to braid a coronet from sprigs of juniper and remnants of autumn weeds. She parades across the yard, clambering over roots and other white-wrapped wonders. She owns this day, powder on her tongue. She glitters the pine cones back onto the trees. Queen of icicles. Ancient goddess of the North in pink puffy boots. A deer in the yard grazes unconcerned, a smaller deer beside it, imitating its calm. All fur and grace and tick-grit, they strip the sweet leaves that are left. The morning grows brighter, the cars hiss louder. The deer glance aslant toward the traffic, take steps back into thicker trees. A noise startles them to bounding, and a trickle that wants to be a brook splashes beneath their hooves. It sounds like laughter, almost like the teens that run ruddy with the blush of not dressing quite right for the weather. My fingers dead and numb inside my dollar-store magic gloves. Engines rise in full chorus, snowblowers throwing dollops of white against hapless pines. Call it choreography, kids and dogs circling the landscape. We hum as we clear the driveway: let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. There. We’ve made a Currier and Ives scene; later, wet clothes on the floor, our bodies melt into the dark.