nix [snow]

I woke up this morning to a brief moment of snow.  Elation!  Of course, the sun that we depend on for survival quickly turned it all to puddles, and once again we are left with a snowless landscape as we bustle around our Christmas errands.

As Coldplay teaches, "When you're still waiting for the snow to fall, it doesn't really feel like Christmas at all."

And for those of us from snowy climes, it's absolutely true.  Snow is one of the symbols of Christmas, just as much as pine trees or candy canes or candles and lights. The world covered in white represents several things to me.

For one thing, the snow is a huge cleansing agent out here.  Where I live, the cold winter air tends to trap all the smog and air pollution in a haze of inversion that looks and feels awful.  All of the pollutants that we pump into the air every day just sit there and hang over our heads.  The only way to clean the air up at that point is for the cold inversion to disperse, or for precipitation to clean it out. And nothing cleans the air like a good snowstorm.  After every snowfall, the air is crisp and clean again and the world feels great again.  The more it snows, the cleaner everything feels.  Falling snow is a cleansing agent.

Of course once the snow has fallen, it covers everything in white.  All the dead leaves, yellow grass, bare mud, and dying world are completely dressed in white and made spotlessly beautiful.  The Christmas season has a similar purifying effect on us-- it seems to cover all our mistakes and shortcomings in a coating of goodwill, hope, and charity as we remember what life is really about and find it in ourselves to believe, to forgive, to realign our priorities, to sacrifice, to serve, to inspire, and to be inspired.  Snow on the ground is a renewal of purity.

The winter snow has more than just immediate effects.  For my desert home, the only way that it can support such a growing population and industry on less than ten inches of annual rainfall  is by relying on the snow.  Those towering mountains that shut in all the inversion also save us from an utter paucity of water throughout the ensuing months, as the 500-600 inches of snow banked up over the winter months melts and supplies the valley inhabitants with sufficient water to subsist upon.  Thank you, greatest snow on earth.  Without all that snow, we would not have life-sustaining water.

Even though there is reasonable doubt that December 25th is the actual date of Christ's birth, the traditional winter celebration thereof provides us with a wonderful symbol of Christ's life and what it really means to us.  Through him we can be cleansed of our pollutant mistakes, our mortality can be clothed in purity, and we will have the living water to sustain us through our lives.

For me, snow is a great contributor to the Christmas spirit because it testifies of Jesus Christ.

onus

So.  A long time ago, I promised a snow poem.

And seeing as National Poetry Month is almost over, I finally got around to writing it.

Part of this delay is due to other things in life (read: the life of an engineer is not conducive to poetry) and also, you really have to be in a particular mood to write a poem.  I tried a few times unsuccessfully to get this down.  But today in statics class, it slipped out onto the paper. :)

Here goes:

Perfection

Snow falls overnight

And we awaken

To a new perfection.

The flawless landscape shivers

And bows

Deep beneath this new burden.

The morning sun arrives to bare the world,

The snow begins to melt

And the trees begin to weep-

drip. drip. drip.

As their sweet burden of perfection

Is lifted.

So...there you are. :)

videre

I did something the other day that I haven't done for quite some time. 

I was talking to a boy (oooooOOOooooo...that's not what it was, though.  I've done that often :P) and the conversation turned to what his favorite poet was.  I was expecting some answer along the lines of Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, or if I was lucky, Langston Hughes.  Instead the response was "Billy Collins".  I was like "Who is that?"

Turns out he's a contemporary poet.  He has this book called Horoscopes for the Dead.  I read the book in its entirety in about half an hour (a terrible pace to be reading poetry, I know, but I prefer to read poetry with a pen in hand...and I don't think my friend would have appreciated it if I marked up his book...)

It had been a while since I had read poetry, especially the contemporary stuff.  So it was refreshing yet slightly alien to read it then.  There were a few poems that stood out to me, although I must admit that on the whole, I don't think Billy Collins will really become one of my favorites.

Something remarkable, though, was the way that Collins was able to point out the seemingly arbitrary things in life and make them something new and thoughtful.  Like lawn chairs, perpetually unused.

Two of the poems that illustrated this awareness of life quite diligently were "Thieves" and "As Usual" (look them up, if you want)

Here are excerpts:

The magnolia will flower,

and the bee, the noble bee--

I saw one earlier on my walk--

will shoulder his way into the bud.

(from "As Usual")

I considered myself lucky to notice

on my walk a mouse ducking like a culprit

into an opening in a stone wall,

a bit of fern draped over his disappearance,

(from "Thieves")

I found myself wondering what motivated Collins to mention, in the middle of his discourse on the bee, the fact that he had seen one earlier.  I mean, we all see bees, probably on most of our walks. (Although winter walks maybe not..) So why bring it up, like some noteworthy event?

Especially in a poem titled, "As Usual".  Mmmm....good stuff right there.

But it got me thinking about all the things that we see on a daily basis--the noble things, even--that go completely unnoticed to us.

As Sherlock Holmes would say, "You see, but you do not observe!"

Observe: Benedict Yumberbatch

This idea was then reinforced in the opening line of "Thieves": "I considered myself lucky to notice".  How many things are we so fortunate to witness that are completely trivial to us?  I saw a bird die once, and I considered myself lucky to be there, and I've considered myself to notice dragonflies battling the wind, but I've never before considered myself lucky to witness birds taking flight, or grasses bending in the breeze.  Or even the delicious snow that has been falling so bountifully lately.

Why not take some time and notice things, then?  And then consider just how lucky you are to have shared that moment with the universe.

And if you're feeling like it, write a poem about it.

I currently have one under construction concerning the snow.  I'll be sure to post it when it's ready to meet you. :)