Let it snow let it snow let it snow

Poem by Dick Jones

I like winter weather. A frigid snowy day is a good day, that I enjoy the way other people enjoy a balmy, sunny day. Biting cold perks me up. I particularly like walking as snow is falling, in the midst of just such a snowscape as Dick describes in the poem. Hell, I even like shoveling snow.

Dr. Omed, liking it.

Alas for me in this era of warming climates snowy days have become rare occasions at the zone of latitude in which I live. The local weatherman promised a little snow this morning but all we got was freezing rain. I feel lucky when I get a day the temperature dips toward freezing. A 70+F day in December or January (Louisville has had several) is downright disquieting…to me. I’ve asked people on such summery winter days if such unseasonable weather bothers them, and clearly the only thing that was bothering them was me asking a question that interrupted their heedless enjoyment of the summer-like warmth. Me, I don’t put on socks or long pants until the temp drops to 40F. Some Louisvillians I’ve seen dress like Eskimos when it gets that “cold.”

I like cold weather and like cold weather in poetry. Lyrics that leave a chill. A poem that speaks with the breath of winter speaks true–to me. When I read Dick’s latest poem at Patteran Pages, I caught that delicious chill that the weather of the world mostly denies me. I’ve been following Dick Jones since our days as Salonistas–about ten years–and in his work these days in my opinion he’s getting the better of better. I thank him for letting me repost, because I wanted to pair his snow poem with a snow poem written by Wallace Stevens–the finest winter poem in English that I know:

The Snow Man

x

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

x

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

x

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

x

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

x

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Colder and colder. Now that I’ve worked up a proper chill, I can put on a sweater and walk the dog in the cold but not snowy night. Maybe we’ll catch a stray flake.