In his poem, Birches, Robert Frost described it as “heaps of broken glass to sweep away.” Such was what remained after my fist or foot had crushed the ice’s glaze. Elsewhere, the uninterrupted crust deterred the rain from reaching the inch of fluffy snow and frozen soil beneath. Each drop pelted the blockade with a sound like no other. Today, the barrier between rain and earth would be broken slowly, with a million tiny fists, and judging by the happy chirp of the chickadees, the one between winter and spring was soon to meet the same slow demise.
