Outside my window, snow is sifting down
Like bakers' sugar, superfine, caster sugar
Turning bare trees to bleached coral
With dark drop shadow under-branches.
There's a knot hole in an ash, feet from my window,
The size of a breakfast grapefruit,
A chunky ruddy squirrel is nesting in there
For one obvious thing, my lines don't rhyme. If I spent time on it, I am sure I could rearrange
the lines and word pictures, and the result might be comforting, soothing and pleasant to read aloud
but I am more interested in observation, couched in some sibilance, alliteration.
I wonder what is about the same size as a grapefruit, but is both more evocative and rhymes with plenty of words. A boxing glove would be too big, too red, too suggestive of violence, and not worth using for the possibilities of "love", "dove", "above", "trove" (the latter is an eye-rhyme.)
Have you looked at bare ash and mulberry trees after snow? Coral is the right image, I think. Allegedly, there are 141 words that rhyme with coral. "Sorrel" and "quarrel" might have possibilities, but I wouldn't want to branch off into a discussion of my neighbors' possible lack of "moral" fiber for cutting down sources of winter shelter and food for wildlife.
The squirrel is probably a "grey" squirrel, but she is a dirty orange color, and her nesting material looks a lot like shredded phragmites (a bleached-ochre colored invasive species of reed-like grass). Red-wing blackbirds love to nest in it, by the way, as herons don't seem able to get through it.
There's nothing that rhymes with "phragmites", and if one called it "frag", only a lake and streams enthusiast would understand the allusion, although, a lot of words rhyme with "frag".
"Ruddy" means "reddish". In church today, our pastor perorated on the prophet Samuel seeking out David, eighth and youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, for the purpose of anointing the next king to succeed Saul. David had to be fetched from the distant fields where he was a shepherd. He was described as "ruddy", and our pastor explained that this meant that David was healthy, athletic, and studly like a football player.
In fact, "ruddy" probably meant that David had a working man's tan from being out in the sun, the wind and the weather in the course of his shepherding responsibilities.
I've written before on the importance (in my opinion) of selecting the best word possible to communicate a thought or image. To do that, one needs an extraordinary vocabulary, the diligence to double check that the meaning of the word is --in today's parlance-- what you think it is.
One also needs to spend time being observant of the world around one, so one has the mental rolodex of images for all seasons, and maybe to keep a private collections of the best of them.
Although Shakespeare described nature as "red in tooth and claw", a lot of nature is peaceful and soothing if one takes the time to watch and listen attentively.... especially when it is snowing.
All the best,
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