Fog down to the ground - light enough to count as mist, and somewhere up above, the sun, lighting the fog bright-white. Every day a little less snow, but there isn't the spring of Manitoba here.
The snow is still melting, and the air smells like rot, like wet tin, like the soil castings from earthworms. It's hard to believe that there is so much to smell, and how, just weeks ago under snow, there was so little. And you didn't even notice it was missing.
And next door, hundreds of pounds of dog crap appear from the snow. I love the melting snowpiles at the malls, the way they melt in a stratified pattern like a cut bank or an archeological dig, only much faster.
is a writer whose first collection of short stories, The Hour of Bad Decisions, was nominated for numerous awards including, most notably, the longlist for the 2006 Giller Prize and the shortlist for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The editor of the St. John’s Telegram in Newfoundland, his columns and editorials appear in newspapers
across Canada.