The Snow Man

A poem today.

This one is thirteen lines. One sentence. It was written in 1921 by Wallace Stevens, who was also an insurance executive — a man whose day job was the actuarial measurement of risk and whose night work was the study of what measurement cannot reach.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Read it more than once. Read it aloud if you can. Try to sustain your thought across the entire poem. It is one long sentence.