Now, I realize that winter is unpopular, that it is widely regarded as the season to be gotten through. And I know my view would be somewhat less romantic if I had to shovel snow or lived someplace where it gets
really cold (like Minneapolis, where, Irene explained, one avoids walking even short distances because one's eyelashes freeze together). And I acknowledge that the season probably holds a certain novelty because I grew up mostly in the desert Southwest.
Still, I think winter has its own stark beauty, in the purity of its gray, black, and white color scheme; the bracing clarity of icy air; the quiet of heavy snowfall. In a strange way, the beauty of a winter landscape is not completely unlike that of the desert. I suppose extremes of temperature reduce things to their cleanest, sparest forms.
This poem, from
The Writer's Almanac a couple days ago, captures that beauty eloquently.
Zero Holding
Robyn Sarah
I grow to like the bare
trees and the snow, the bones and fur
of winter. Even the greyness
of the nunneries, they are so grey,
walled all around with grey stones —
and the snow piled up on ledges
of wall and sill, those grey
planes for holding snow: this is how
it will be, months now, all so still,
sunk in itself, only the cold alive,
vibrant, like a wire — and all the
busy chimneys — their ghost-breath,
a rumour of lives warmed within,
rising, rising, and blowing away.
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