What Woke Me Up

Very early Sunday morning, not quite dawn, something woke me up. A sound. I glanced around, peaked out of the bedroom windows, went down the stairs, looked out the door. Nothing was amiss. All I saw were snowflakes, dancing in the air. I knew what had awakened me.

It was the sound of snow.

Snow has a tune of its own, with notes that form a melody that is as hard to explain as each different, downy flake. It was the sound of snow that woke me.

Awake, I put the teakettle on, set out a cup and saucer, swirled some local honey in the cup, and waited for the pot to boil. As I waited for the water  to boil, I remembered a poem by Wallace Stevens.

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

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.

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