Sunday, November 16, 2008

The Nothing That Is

Before it fell, all day Saturday, and after it fell, all day Sunday, early snow has blanketed my spirit, leaving me cold.
I can think only of Wallace Stevens' poem, "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.

1 comment:

P. Michael Quinn said...

I thought of you as we were in the woods near Foster falls when the snow fell. It is November now, for sure!