A winter warmer

I found this poem on a friend’s blog a few years ago, and recently sent it on to another who was putting together an uplifting set of facts and thought pieces for a to-be divorcee. Though perhaps not immediately brightening, I find it inspiring. And wanted to put it somewhere I know I can find it (until the internet collapses and cockroaches take over the world anyway). It’s almost the right season. How is it possibly time for Christmas already?

The Snow Man

By Walter Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.