You hear the incredulity from locals:

—Never seen this much snow…
—The house is mostly buried…
—We shovel and shovel—more keeps coming…

and
—The bay’s frozen over.

Sure enough, snow white has overtaken
the emerald, frosting little Fannette Island
like a vanilla cake topper,

the lake’s only island, which a ranger showed
me the summer I spent as a journalist in Tahoe,
climbing the rocky hill to the Tea House

commissioned by Mrs. Knight, the wealthy
woman who lived onshore and occasionally
boated guests out there for Earl Grey and

finger sandwiches—now truly a shell of its
former self, frozen in time like the surface
of the glacier-gouged bay that surely sleeps

beneath that creamy surface of glistening ice.