Walking in a Spring Wonderland

We've been having some strange weather the past couple of days. It has snowed more or less continuously throughout the day and night. However, the daytime temperatures have been high enough to turn the snow into water upon contact with the surfaces of sidewalks, driveways, and streets. The sky right now has the same gauzy gray look it has on a mid-winter evening when it plans to shake its snowy contents out slowly all night long like sifted confectioner's sugar on an expansive sheet of cake.

This snow is different, though, in that it is heavy with its own water suspended within its dense structure, just as the liquid flavoring drizzled over an ice cone at the state fair spreads throughout the compact, icy mound without pooling in the bottom. This snow will turn to ice overnight if one doesn't shovel it off the driveway. This snow weighs a ton and sticks to the shovel and forms stubborn piles as one tries to push it to the driveway's edge.

This snow melts upon contact with one's face and upon contact with a dark surface, such as an exposed driveway, but it piles up upon contact with a light surface, such as other snow; this makes it crucial for one to shovel overnight accumulations off the driveway in order for the new day's amounts to make contact with dark, melt-inducing concrete rather than light, pile-inducing snow.

This snow means that little girls' snowpants and gloves are soaked through at the end of the day and need a trip through the clothes dryer so as not to be soggy and cold to slip on in the morning. This snow is awfully fun to play in--it is slushy and splatters when stomped in; it makes superb and dangerous snowballs that are a cross between water balloons and rocks; and it leaves clear evidence of one's presence, showing the outline and pattern of every shoe and boot step in bas-relief.

This snow inspired me to think of just the right words to describe it, and that reminded me of others who have tried to describe snow in fresh, accurate, original, thought-provoking ways. Remember: it's still April, and that's still National Poetry Month. So poke around a bit below and peruse some poems (the Frost and Whittier poems are classics, and Billy Collins' poems is, as usual, a hoot) inspired by snow.

"Dust of Snow" by Robert Frost

"Falling Snow" (anonymous)

"The Japanese Garden" by Shirley Ann Norman (check out the interesting electronic music that plays in the background)

"Snow" by David Berman

"Snow" by Jared Carter

"Snow" by E. E. Cummings

"Snow Day" by Billy Collins

"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

"The Snow Storm" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll" by John Greenleaf Whittier

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

sundry snow-related poems

miscellaneous snow-related poems

divers snow-related poems