GA Milestones EOG Practice Test 4

After the Ice Storm

All night the rain came down as glass and sealed each twig in a silver sleeve; the porch rail wore a frozen fringe, the willows bowed as if to grieve.

By midnight every branch was strung with beads of ice like a jeweler's thread, and softly, softly, the snowless hush lay over the yard, the barn, the shed.

Then came the crack, the crack, the clatter, the split and grind of the old oak's limb, a jagged racket, brittle, broken, that knocked the dark from rim to rim.

At dawn my father walked the yard and counted every limb that fell: the oak's great arm across the drive, the cedar bent, the birch as well.

But then the sun came up the hill and lit the ice to a blaze of white, and every ruined, glittering tree was a chandelier of morning light.

"We'll burn that oak next winter, warm," my father said, "and come the spring, the stump will send up something green." The ice let go. I heard it sing.