On my walk today, I feel the bite of the -20 degree cold. Yesterday, it was +2 degrees. The temperatures are swinging wildly between a few days of relative warmth and a few days of brittle cold.

Yesterday, the snow was melting. Today it has refrozen into ice crystals. The field where horses graze in summer is now a sea of diamonds. A small stunted crab apple tree is fringed with hoarfrost.

When it's near zero degrees, the sun is a woolen mantle resting on my shoulders. But, today, icy claws cling to my neck. The cold makes me hunch into myself, I feel stunted, twisted, like the tree.

I regret the loss of winter's simple white harmonies, and yet yearn for the colored chaos of spring.

bitter sweet
the taste of crab apples -
spring approaching

Ray Rasmussen is a photographer who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He spends a good deal of his outdoor time in Canyonlands National Park, Utah and in one of Canada's most remote and untouched provincial parks, Willmore Wilderness just North of Jasper National Park. He writes haiku poetry and its related forms haibun [prose plus haiku]. He is also active in creating haiga [haiku plus images]. In a previous life he was a University Professor. See website.