Introduction by Ted Kooser: The first two lines of this poem pose a question many of us may have thought about: how does snow make silence even more silent? And notice Robert Haight’s deft use of color, only those few flecks of red, and the rest of the poem pure white. And silent, so silent. Haight lives in Michigan, where people know about snow.

How Is It That the Snow

How is it that the snow

amplifies the silence,

slathers the black bark on limbs,

heaps along the brush rows?

Some deer have stood on their hind legs

to pull the berries down.

Now they are ghosts along the path,

snow flecked with red wine stains.

This silence in the timbers.

A woodpecker on one of the trees

taps out its story,

stopping now and then in the lapse

of one white moment into another.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2002 by Robert Haight from his most recent book of poetry, “Emergences and Spinner Falls,” New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2002. Reprinted by permission of Robert Haight. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Introduction by Ted Kooser: Here’s a lovely poem for this lovely month, by Robert Haight, who lives in Michigan.

Early October Snow

It will not stay.

But this morning we wake to pale muslin

stretched across the grass.

The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets

shrouded by clouds.

The Weber wears a dunce cap

and sits in the corner by the garage

where asters wrap scarves

around their necks to warm their blooms.

The leaves, still soldered to their branches

by a frozen drop of dew, splash

apple and pear paint along the roadsides.

It seems we have glanced out a window

into the near future, mid-December, say,

the black and white photo of winter

carefully laid over the present autumn,

like a morning we pause at the mirror

inspecting the single strand of hair

that overnight has turned to snow.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Robert Haight from his most recent book of poems, Feeding Wild Birds, Mayapple Press, 2013. (Lines two and six are variations of lines by Herb Scott and John Woods.) Poem reprinted by permission of Robert Haight and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Here’s a lovely poem about snow falling on San Antonio by Mo H. Saidi, an obstetrician and writer who, in addition to his medical training, has a Master’s degree in English and Literature from Harvard. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

The Night of the Snowfall

Snow falls gently in the Hill Country

covering the meadows and the valleys.

The sluggish streaks of smoke climb quietly

from the roofs but fail to reach the lazy clouds.

On Alamo Plaza in the heart of the night

and under the flood of lights, the flakes float

like frozen moths and glow like fireflies.

They drop on the blades of dormant grass.

They alight on the cobblestones and live awhile

in silence, they dissolve before dawn.

The wet limestone walls of the mission

glow proudly after the night of snowfall.

Many of us keep journals, but while doing so few of us pay much attention to selecting the most precise words, to determining their most effective order, to working with effective pauses and breath-like pacing, to presenting an engaging impression of a single, unique day. This poem by Nebraskan Nancy McCleery is a good example of one poet’s carefully recorded observations. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

December Notes

The backyard is one white sheet

Where we read in the bird tracks

The songs we hear. Delicate

Sparrow, heavier cardinal,

Filigree threads of chickadee.

And wing patterns where one flew

Low, then up and away, gone

To the woods but calling out

Clearly its bright epigrams.

More snow promised for tonight.

The postal van is stalled

In the road again, the mail

Will be late and any good news

Will reach us by hand.

When spring finally arrives, it can be fun to see what winter left behind, and Jeffrey Harrison of Massachusetts is doing just that in this amusing poem. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Mailboxes in Late Winter

It’s a motley lot. A few still stand

at attention like sentries at the ends

of their driveways, but more lean

askance as if they’d just received a blow

to the head, and in fact they’ve received

many, all winter, from jets of wet snow

shooting off the curved, tapered blade

of the plow. Some look wobbly, cocked

at oddball angles or slumping forlornly

on precariously listing posts. One box

bows steeply forward, as if in disgrace, its door

lolling sideways, unhinged. Others are dented,

battered, streaked with rust, bandaged in duct tape,

crisscrossed with clothesline or bungee cords.

A few lie abashed in remnants of the very snow

that knocked them from their perches.

Another is wedged in the crook of a tree

like a birdhouse, its post shattered nearby.

I almost feel sorry for them, worn out

by the long winter, off-kilter, not knowing

what hit them, trying to hold themselves

together, as they wait for news from spring.