This is not the post I had in mind for today – but we’re having a true snowfall for the fist time in… oh, I don’t know: years, I rather believe.

It started last night, just as I drove home – which was, if you ask me, absolutely perfect, as far as sentimental fallacy goes – and it’s been snowing through the whole night, and still snowing cats and dogs. Past beautiful, that’s what it is.

And because it happens so seldom in my corner of the world, and it is such a rare and lovely occurrence, I thought I’d mark and celebrate it with poetry.

Emily Dickinson, in particular.

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, —
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem, —
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, —
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

Ah, the loveliness of it, the cold and bright imagery, the unexpected turns… And to make it all a little more perfect still, let’s have some music, shall we? How about Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Snowflakes?

Oh, snow… Colour me so very, very happy!