Spring In Ithaca

overnight the trees are blooming
not sprouting leaves or flowers
but bearing fluffy cotton snow
from last night's storm
white puffs thickly coating the branches
blowing off in bursts of snow pollen
to cover the ground

this is ithaca in spring
the snow is wetter
clinging to, piling on the branches

*

It snowed yesterday in parts of the Bay area, including near PK, for the first time in almost half a century. PK loved it, according to her mom. It makes me homesick. I'm used to seeing Mount Hamilton coated in snow, rising up behind the nearer mountains, white cap poking out. I wish I could have seen my regular haunts with snow.
There is a book by the title of Crazy Weather, published in 1944, that I read a few years back about a boy caught between the Mojave and white people's worlds. It was during a stretch when I read everything I could about how the West, and California in particular, used to be. I think of this book, by association, when I think about the weather because we are certainly having crazy weather now.