the snow man

for many people,

winter is a difficult time.

cold, dark, without cheer.

i understand that.

so i have found a way,

a means by which i can live

with those very real features

of what - for canadians in the eastern woodlands -

constitutes as much as one third (or more)

of the calendar year.

you see,

for me

the arrival of snow brings with it

the rekindling of memories

of winters long past.

the softening of the landscape

softens the eyes and the heart.

wallace stevens wrote about the experiencing of winter

as a means for understanding

the apparent emptiness

of a winter landscape.

it gifts us with a rich metaphor

for "the nothing that is".

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.

wallace stevens