weekly poem

We had no white Christmas in Chicago today; it was a beautiful, sparkling, sunny winter day. But on Christmas Eve especially, when there's no soft and silent snow, I always feel there's something missing. It must be my New England blood, restless for weather. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The Snow Man

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.

-- by Wallace Stevens

from Harmonium, 1923