Snow Poetries

Now that once more Earth has moved into closer intimacy with the Sun and there should be no more really cold events until the outward journey is in full swing, about seven months from now, I can think of snow with more detachment. The winter here was severe, though not as tough as in many other parts of the country, and, as always, I was grateful for the amount of the white stuff we got, because, aside from its immediate insulating value, it is always good for the growing things later in the year, and for our own water supply.

I love snow -- although I'm glad I don't have to do much driving in it. One of the many reasons I moved to the woods in Virginia was so that I could see snow stay on the ground until it melted without first being turned into blackened, jumbled slush within hours, as in the city. Also I got tired of hearing all the baboonbutt outlanders -- those from anywhere else in the nation -- who move to D.C. and then promptly and smugly sneer at the troubles Washingtonians have with driving in the snow.

From motoring through the Canadian Maritimes in the early 1970's, I have an impression of a place where, some distance up a slight slope from a bay or a sound, houses stood a few hundred feet apart, with few outbuildings or other structures near them, and each had a long driveway leading straight as an arrow down to the water. Ever since then I have thought that I wouldn't mind being snowbound in such a place for a whole winter. I think it was in New Brunswick.

One of my favorite poems is "Snow-Bound," written by John Greenleaf Whittier. And one of my very biggest treasures is a booklet browned by age that consists entirely of that 600-line poem. The original owner, a lady, inscribed it with the date 1866, which was one year after Whittier wrote it. I chanced to find that gem when I was a young man, in one of those small, dusty, grimy, used book stores that used to line 9th Street in downtown D.C., just below the Public Library. Of course those wonderful places have long since disappeared.

A person occasionally has incredible days like that! The booklet cost me 99 cents.

Here is a big little poem that I chanced upon when I was a child. Funny how I have kept it in my mind for so long when I have no idea of the title, the author, or where I saw it.

These be three silent things...
The falling snow,
The hour before the dawn....
The mouth of one just dead.
--Unknown Author

When I was in junior high school, we were encouraged to submit poems in a competition. . After we had done so and then long since had forgotten about it, the teacher announced that only one person in the class had had a poem accepted and guess who. It took some time before someone suggested me. There was some surprise that I had it in me. I don't know what they thought I had in me. This winning poem was about the snow. I don't recall what title I used, and, though it was published, I don't know where. I know my verse doesn't compare with the poem above, and for some reason the lines below are the only ones that stuck in my head, most likely because they were the first verse.

The snow is falling, it's everywhere.
Low here but very deep there.
Falling softly in the night,
It has covered the world with a blanket of white.

I wonder how the other stanzas went. In those days posterity wasn't high on my list of concerns, and even now it's not something that I enjoy contemplating. But I know it exists because enough time has passed that I have at last managed to see its light glowing under that closed door.