56 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
fussing, but, rather, heated thereby. Whether 
fanning creates more heat in me than it invites 
coolness out of me is a proposition on which I 
am still agnostic. Yet am I of a confident mind 
that drubbing the weather is retroactive. It 
kicks back “awful.” Cold days were never 
warmed by an inhabitant getting mad. That 
kind of heat does not modify the temperature. 
Better slap your hands or cavort with your feet. 
So winter at its wildest bids this two of us 
out to my hill to luxuriate in its winter passion. 
The cornfield tented over with the shocks of 
corn, as you might discern in the picture taken 
with freezing fingers on this identical winter day, 
has never a rabbit track on it, nor a fussy tod- 
dling of a field mouse. Across it has passed the 
scythe of the icy wind and cut everything to a 
common level. The snow is rioting in every 
breath the wind draws. The storm is bonny. 
Every nose is an inconvenience, for the weather 
tweaks it in a jocular way which, while neigh- 
borly, is a little too familiar. Where the rabbits 
are is a mystery, but they are not around here. 
I have played circuit rider going around this 
farm from Dan to Beersheba and never a rabbit 
nor a rabbit track. Maybe they have been 
drinking nepenthe, as Mr. Poe advised, or maybe 
they have taken to hibernation, mistaking this 
for arctic climate. A crow occasionally plunges 
through the sky intent on going somewhere or 
dives down to make free with a corn shock he 
