Snow Day!
My oh my it is cold, and white and crisp outside.
D & I knew the storm was coming, spent the day putting up our holiday decorations indoors, and cooked a big pot of potato leek soup. We have an artificial tree (very PC) some icicle lights and some tin stars for the doors. I think it all looks lovely, esp with the new snow. I have a funeral to go to today, of a dear patient of mine who died earlier in the week. Not looking forward to driving in the ice, but I really want to be there, or at least make an appearance.

*

The Snowman

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.

--Wallace Stevens

*

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

--Robert Frost

*

I've never thought of it before but, looked at together, these poems are really actually very similar, aren't they? Though Frost and Stevens were very different poets, aesthetically, I think they have arrived at pretty much the same artistic-philosophical-spiritual place in these poems.