Swirling

It snowed last night.
Not the soft fluffy snow of romantic walks,
but cold and shrunken
stingy snow
that this morning is being blown about by the wind
under a petulant gray sky.
There may be a prevailing direction, as they say,
but these winds dive and dip and shift and swoop
like a leaf on creek
dodging around rocks
and bouncing off the sides and back to the center
or trapped by a Cottonwood root
until melting away from decay.
The frozen crystals blown from roofs
dive toward the earth
dipping suddenly to the side
shifting upward a level
as if avoiding unseen obstacles
or pulled by invisible strings
to swoop downward again
unless trapped by a shrub
maybe to be blown away again
or maybe not.