Even if the calendar is slow, the weather and my aching bones tell me winter is acomin' in (lhude sing goddam!). So since the Autumn poetry thread went well, how about a Winter Poetry thread. But PLEASE! no holiday doggerel.

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

ICE STORM

The language of the heart would desecrate,
The chastity of this moon-blinded night,
these iridescent trees of ice, these great,
ascetic areas of silver light

that have been fields before the winter rain
froze on the snow to magnify the moon.
The trees and vines tinkle a thin refrain
like a glass windbell's tune.

Let those who go abroad be solitary,
stifle the heart and see how this unknown
and brittle world, unreal and legendary,
was filmed in crystal for the mind alone.

Jessica Powers

Early Snow

Amazed I looked
out of the window and saw
the early snow coming down casually,
almost drifting, over

the gardens, then the gardens began
to vanish as each white, six pointed
snowflake lay down without a sound with all
the others. I thought, how incredible

were their numbers. I thought of dried
leaves drifting spate after spate
out of the forests,
the fallen sparrows, the hairs of all our heads,

as, still, the snowflakes went on pouring softly through
what had become dusk or anyway flung
a veil over the sun. And I thought
how not one looks like another

though each is exquisite, fanciful, and
falls without argument. It was now nearly
evening. Some crows landed and tried
to walk around then flew off. They were perhaps

laughing in crow talk or anyway so it seemed
and I might have joined in, there was something
that wonderful and refreshing
about what was by then a confident, white blanket
carrying out its
cheerful work, covering ruts, softening
the earth’s trials, but at the same time
there was some kind of almost sorrow that fell

over me. It was
the loneliness again. After all
what is Nature, it isn’t
kindness, it isn’t unkindness. And I turned

and opened the door, and still the snow poured down
smelling of iron and the pale, vast eternal, and
there it was, whether I was ready or not:
the silence; the blank, white, glittering sublime.

Mary Oliver


From What Do We Know, Poems and Prose Poems, Da Capo Press, 2002.

Now is the winter of your discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun outdoors

I am an ignoramus about poetry. But Frost without beautiful words or images evokes
thoughts that make his poems memorable.

winter is acomin' in (lhude sing goddam!)

Well, that was gonna be my contribution...

i went looking for an excerpt from John Greenleaf Whittier's
Snow-Bound--it is properly a December poem.. but it is most definately a winter one.. these are just the first xx lines of thousand or more!

THE sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,
Brought in the wood from out the doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

the poem goes on for ever, but it does capture a nor'easter snow storm and aftermath..

Whitecaps
shoulder the waves
upon wintery shores.
Glistening
o'er icy snow
While the north wind
flails the lake
ending its romance
with the south wind.

Marie E. Jackson

Sonnet LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourisht by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
-- Wm. Shakespeare

Thanks, Bob, for Sonner 73, a rare gem that reveals something new with each reading.

And from As You Like It:
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude:
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho, sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then heigh-ho the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friends remembered not.