Day 86: The Snow Man and the Snow Dog

A peaceful snow day spent inside writing, reveling in the luxury of all this snow and time.  And then a romp with the dog, chasing and stillness: the ephemeral and eternal, lying down, side by side.

It was inevitable in a blog with "Winter" in the title that I would one day pay homage to Wallace Stevens.

 

 

"The Snow Man" by 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. 

"The Dog in Winter" by Natalia Rachel Singer

One must have a mind of winter to regard the hemlock branches laden with snow and the steep slope toward the river where bones were buried in fall leaves and scattered sticks beckon now.

One has to hear music in this wind and in toys squeaking underfoot where the crust is thin, not the misery of cold March even if somewhere not far from here crocuses break ground with furious color. 

In this late winter stillness, a canine mind can perceive the all--winter grass, frozen river, caked branches, wind--until the dog's mind is winter itself, indistinguishable from snow and land.

And then the dog's person watches, beholding the something that is here, not listening yet to the nothing that becomes everything after winter days like this are gone.