116 The Meadow In February on Farm Road Mark Sanders The old man steps outside, a cold winter’s morning when the pasture is whitened over in hoarfrost, the fence wire, the berried holly shrubs about the porch. The very sky is white like frost, and his breathing deepens the whiteness of it. It is good to be this cold and to enjoy it, he thinks, as in the manner he enjoys cardinals riding fences or wires, rocking shrub branches, the white air. It is good it is good it is good to be so cold and alone and alive that he should not worry because worry will burn itself out, and ash of embers of hardest oak be white as another kind of frost.
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