Out of the bathroom window in the middle of the night, a scene from an expressionist painting. The moon, too large, glares through black tree limbs. Snow forms a smooth shape, a pearly pool, amid the trunks. Houses stand at crazy angles.

Two people walk through the cold naked grove;
The moon goes with them, they gaze at it.
The moon slips over tall oak trees;
No cloud obscures the heaven’s light
Into which the black spikes reach.

(From Richard Dehmel, Zwei Menschen, 1903)

A woman is running, screaming up Winter Hill in Somerville toward a gas station, where a knot of people stands. One of them is a police officer. Her dog lies on his side as if asleep.

False spring on Brattle Street: grand Victorian houses, an anthology of architectural styles. Joggers, toddlers in strollers, buds on the manicured foliage.

On a beach near Gloucester, the vacation houses have a slum-like look. They are small and boarded-up for winter; the streets are deserted in the cold sea air. There’s a game of horse-shoe on the sand, and dogs run joyfully in the surf.