We were walking in the snow just before dawn the other morning, through knee-high drifts as it kept snowing, fat flakes striking our cheeks and dappling the black coat of the collie. It was hard to know whether the sun had risen or was about to rise above the hills; it was all a soft blue-gray. It was 24 inches of snow in 24 hours and we were glad to be out in it.
We saw a clutch of blackbirds on the highway, crows or ravens, scattering as a car approached, its headlights softened by the snow. They had found a treasure on the road, you could tell from the way they flew up only far enough to let the car pass and hovered chaotically, flashing black against the white expanse. And we thought of poetry – of Wallace Stevens of Hartford, Connecticut, and of the last stanza of his “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”:
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
They are beautiful lines, like a classical Chinese landscape painting, but they are also composed indoors.
And still the snow fell.
We heard a mallard squawk. Could there be open water in this weather? Was it trapped? We consulted with the collie. He was pointing with his snout, his eyes the alert color of caramel.
Robert Frost of Derry, New Hampshire, wrote about snow, and about his disquieted horse, in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:
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.
We found a narrow channel of open water, and the mallard, alone. We could not be sure, but he seemed to be asking why we were bothering with him, and we went on contented.
Has anyone ever written better about snow falling than James Joyce at the end of “The Dead”?
“Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
That is a requiem. It is stunning prose, but it, too, is indoor poetry. It did not fit a morning out with so much snow.
About half a mile from home, we were met by a small orange tabby cat of our acquaintance. He came trotting after us like a Creamsicle in the snow. Neither feral nor domesticated, he simply lives outdoors year-round, his own cat. He is rightfully afraid of dogs, except for the collie, for some reason. Once, he got close enough to softly boop the dog’s nose, sealing things, we imagined. This morning, he had news: The world had been transformed. All this snow.
Neither poetry nor prose, he is a wonderful cat. His paws left no tracks in the powder.
