Sunset and snow

We have had the balmy tease of spring in the air for several days, but today things turned around. Looking out the window this afternoon I was surprised by the dreamlike snow falling, as if in slow motion, to the ground. It melted on the wet-black pavement but didn't melt on the wet black winter trees, and as the sun set the undersides of the winter clouds turned a golden pink. World outside: going about your business being so astounding and beautiful.

I got a new book for Christmas, one that I had asked for after reading these sentences which began the story: "The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow."