WINTER POEMS -- Fletcher, Frost, Williams, Hardy

THE SKATERS
by John Gould Fletcher

To A. D. R.

Black swallows swooping or gliding
In a flurry of entangled loops and curves;
The skaters skim over the frozen river.
And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the
     surface,
Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.
#

BLIZZARD
by William Carlos Williams

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down--
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes--
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there--
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.
#
--from IMAGIST POETRY: AN ANTHOLOGY
edited by Bob Blaisdell, Dover Thrift Editions
1999
~ ~ ~ ~
A PATCH OF OLD SNOW
by Robert Frost

There's a patch of old snow in a corner,
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of the day I've forgotten--
If I ever read it.
#

from SNOW IN THE SUBURBS
by Thomas Hardy

A sparrow enters the tree
Whereupon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes.
And overturns him,
And near inturns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
#

--from WINTER POEMS selected by Barbara Rogasky,
Scholastic, 1995
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~