Which blizzard, you ask. Choose your whirlwind.
I am sitting inside with the majority of those of us in the Northeast US who are (1) receiving a snow blizzard, and (2) have the freedom, place, wherewithal to be inside. I have in my mind that the bitter, chill winds I am from inside looking at and shivering at (even as I watch numerous juncos absolutely rollicking in this, their apparent ideal weather conditions), are at this very moment buffeting some who haven’t inside to look out from.
At the moment, I have just finished spending awhile watching my very kind neighbors from two houses back, a father and adult son, plow the mouth of my driveway, my front walkway, the sidewalk that passes in front of my house, and shovel off the entire front porch and steps. This snow is heavy, I’m guessing its psi exceeds mine. (Is that even a legitimate measurement to use here?)
So, what do you think of your one beautiful planet? Do you find it as fascinating as I do? Are you as fascinated by the ways beauty can be trampled, as you are by the way it can remain even in the face of disregard, distress, diminishment, dis-?
You may have noticed, if you’ve been reading me for a time, that I am grateful always for the poems of Robert Frost. So, since today, and reflective of my immediately previous post early the month of February 2026, I am not going to raise your spirits nor mine one iota, I will share some thoughts that Frost expresses better:
On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(to hear us talk)
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.
And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole
And tire of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.
[from New Hampshire (1923)]
The Fear of God
If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere,
From being No one up to being Someone,
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself
You owe it to an arbitrary god
Whose mercy to you rather than to others
Won’t bear too critical examination.
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license
To wear the uniform of who you are,
You should be tempted to make up for it
In a subordinating look or tone,
Beware of coming too much to the surface
And using for apparel what was meant
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.
[from Steeple Bush (1947)]
Closed for Good
Much as I own I owe
The passers of the past
Because their to and fro
Has cut this road to last,
I owe them more today
Because they’ve gone away
And come not back with steed
And chariot to chide
My slowness with their speed
And scare me to one side.
They have found other scenes
For haste and other means.
They leave the road to me
To walk in saying naught
Perhaps but to a tree
Inaudibly in thought,
“From you the road receives
A printing coat of leaves.
“And soon for lack of sun,
The prospects are in white
It will be further done,
But with a coat so light
The shape of leaves will show
Beneath the brush of snow.”
And so on into winter
Till even I have ceased
To come as a foot printer,
And only some slight beast
So mousy or so foxy
Shall print there as my proxy.
[from In the Clearing (1962)]
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