“. . . For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

~ Excerpt from “The Snow Man,” Wallace Stevens

I trusted I would get some good pictures. Snow, a few inches, quite fresh, fallen in the night. From bed, before rising, I looked up at the evergreens, thought, well, it takes so many many countless flakes to whiten such massive trees. The river, it’s center, was black and unfrozen and snow was still falling. All the edges, the wetlands, what ice there still was, now hidden by snow and at the brook I stepped onto it, slid backwards and fell. No harm. Even as the flakes still fell, half-heartedly, the sky blued above the hardwood branches, also black and I could see the sun coming out for a busy day. At the river I stopped for a while because it was so so deliciously quiet and quieting. Only three inches or so; a bit of interest, refreshment, and the temperature warming. I led my Farm Pond Writers webinar; the prompt from a favorite room and then I went to a poetry webinar, one of four I’m taking with Vanessa Gabb, and the poems we read together were amazing: by Solmaz Sharif. My daughter made vegetable soup. In the late afternoon I took a short much needed nap and then made popovers to go with the soup. Tonight, wrote a draft of a poem for tomorrow; it’s so rough; so fresh, I don’t know what I have and where it’s going, but what I felt good about was the retreating to the quietest part of the house after dinner and committing to it, come what will. Letting the effort be enough. Perhaps, as Wallace Stevens says: listening for the nothing that is there and the nothing that is.