A Quiet Storm

I very much like the image you paint here with your words, whether or not it has been done before. You capture the sense of the long slow transformation of falling snow which feels timeless. There are lines in this poem that I find outstanding.  My favourite has to be "tersely brown and grey" closely folowed by "cold and crystalline / cracked". I am less convinced by your use of tense, stanza five being in the present. As I read I want everything to be written present tense in one sustained moment of time becoming out-of-time, emphasised by phrases such as "all the while".

As I read again I wonder about the word 'encovered'. Was this a typo, or did you want to convey the image of bare beneath the sheets? If it is a typo then the tautology doesn't work for me, but reflects the tautology of the third verse (had been taken, had been left empty). If the word wasn't a typo then I feel the word is too 'clever' to use within the simplicity of the rest of your word choices.

Overall though I LIKE this poem very well. I guess its because of that that I want to edit it into something outstanding! Arrogant or what? Ho hum. Use my comments or discard them, whatever fits.