It was quiet except for the occasional vehicle passing by, the tick of the clock, the hum of the fridge, and occasionally, the neighbor's dog barking at something or someone.
Ubiquitous birds at, around and under the seed feeder where snow has melted and errant seeds might be found.
No school buses all four days of the holiday-on-Monday week. The trash bins were still by the roadside Tuesday morning, so might as well leave them out for the new week.
Why not settle in with freshly brewed hazelnut-flavored coffee and a small collection of winter poems edited by the late Barbara Rogasky for Scholastic in 1994? Pretty much snowbound, I read John Greenleaf Whittier's "Snow-Bound." I wonder about the line, "And even the long sweep, high aloof,/In its slant splendor, seemed to tell/of Pisa's leaning miracle."
Bing's chatbot nailed it as the long sweep of the well top. I thought perhaps it referred to a chimney sweep, but in a snowstorm? Not.
Today, we hear none of Edgar Allen Poe's four distinct kinds of bells (and it helps to read again the poet's imaginative ode to bells).
In "Winter Dark," Lilian Moore sees the light as punctuation: "Winter dark comes early/mixing afternoon/and night.// Soon/there's a comma of a moon,/and each street light/along the/way/puts its period/to the end of day.// Now/a neon sign/punctuates the/dark with a bright blinking/breathless/explanation mark!"
Ah, "Velvet Shoes" evokes times past when my All-Region Choir members rehearsed and performed Elinor Wylie's poem set to music--harmonies as exquisite and diaphanous as her words. "Let us walk in the white snow/In a soundless space;/With footsteps quiet and slow,/At a tranquil pace,/Under veils of white lace.//
"I shall go shod in silk,/And you in wool,/White as white cow's milk,/ More beautiful/Than the breast of a gull.//We shall walk through the still town/In a windless peace;/We shall step upon white down,/ Upon silver fleece,/Upon softer than these.//We shall walk in velvet shoes:/Wherever we go/Silence will fall like dews/On white silence below./We shall walk in the snow."
I wish I had a copy of the song we sang.
As I write on the sixth day of still-on-the-ground snow, the mid-morning temperature is 24 degrees. The temps were to rise dramatically the next week. Thank goodness.
But I continue reading, this time Thomas Hardy's "Snow in the Suburbs." After reading, I grew thankful that our snow was not as heavy and debilitating as Hardy's snow.
Like Robert Frost's mention of "patches of old snow," ours would dissipate. But the ground would be wetter, better for the coming dryness of summer.
Sara Teasdale's lines provide a summary: "Look for a lovely thing and you will find it. It is not far. It never will be far." To me, "lovely" will be dead grass and leaves and to go with the bare trees of winter.
Pat Laster is a writer of prose and poetry living in Benton.