In the last few days I have seen it attempt to snow from my living room window as I sit to write my blog. My computer and monitor sit on a desk that overlooks the garden. I can see the flakes gently fall and I have a memory of having seen something like this. It jars my memory until I recollect. In a rush, I run down to my basement photographic files and look under Katheryn Petersen. I find the pictures I am looking for. One of them (the last one) is a rare b+w instant Polaroid slide. The pictures fit what I see from my window and a poem I first heard in class back in 1963.
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it -- it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less --
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars -- on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Robert Frost, A Further Range (1936).
