Something went crabwise
across the snow this morning.

In two plain lines, Kumin turns a small winter observation into a moment of alert attention. “Crabwise” suggests sideways, indirect motion—an animal moving by instinct rather than intention—and the vagueness of “Something” keeps the scene open, emphasizing trace and movement over identification. The snow functions as a blank page on which life briefly writes its passage, so the poem’s drama is not in spectacle but in noticing: the mind registers a sign of presence, then must live with uncertainty about what made it. The effect is characteristic of nature lyric as meditation: a minimal fact becomes a prompt for curiosity, humility, and the recognition of hidden lives intersecting our own.