Winter In Virginia Poem by Natasa To

Winter in Virginia arrives without trumpet or drum,

just a hush that settles in the Blue Ridge at dusk,

where the bones of the Blue Ridge Mountains

hold the last amber light of November.



The fields exhale.

Fence posts lean like tired sentries

over pastures glazed with frost,

each blade of grass a thin cathedral of ice.



Along the James River

the current keeps its quiet counsel,

shouldering past stones blackened by cold,

braiding silver through Richmond's sleeping streets.

Sycamores stand pale and flaking,

their branches sketching psalms against a pewter sky.



In Williamsburg,

brick walks remember other winters—

boots and muskets, powdered wigs,

breath rising like small revolutions in the air.

History does not shiver;

it simply waits beneath the snow.



Farther west, near Roanoke,

the mountains gather weather in their laps.

Storms roll over the ridgelines,

unspooling white across hemlock and pine,

until the world is reduced to shape and shadow,

to crow tracks stitching scripture in a field.



And then there is the coast—

Virginia Beach in January—

where the Atlantic gnaws at the cold shore,

salt wind needling the boardwalk bare.

Gulls wheel like scraps of torn paper,

and the ocean keeps its iron pulse.



Morning comes blue and brittle.

Car doors protest.

Woodsmoke threads the hollows.

A cardinal flares in a cedar's dark fist—

one bright syllable of red

spoken into the grammar of gray.



Yet winter here is never only winter.

By late February, the thaw rehearses its entrance.

Creeks loosen their tongues.

Mud remembers its softness.

And somewhere beneath the frozen furrows,

green is already composing its reply.