The Snow Man
-- Wallace Stevens
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.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90
The Neighborhood Watch We must put on a mind of spring to behold the damp bark and the still arms of tulip-trees iced with cold rain; and have been waiting through raw April days anticipating maples stippled with bloody buds, cedars greening in soggy-bottomed yards under weak sun; and not imagine any bitter snicker in the rush of freezing breeze, the rattle of gutters and rotten leaves, which is the muted scream of lowering clouds still pregnant with winter's dry heaves, retching up the last hailstone coughs over the battered neighborhood -- which waits inside its thawing houses, and, nodding, imagines everything underground, everything about to explode --
Suggested soundtrack: Freezing rain on parked cars.
