If ever there was a month for poetry it is January. We have had some very winter-like weather this month and for that I am truly grateful. While I might not appreciate the snow and cold, nature surely does. I look around my snow-covered back yard and all my bulbs tucked safely away under the blanket of snow… and I smile! This snow and cold will mean that spring will be all the sweeter!
I have a bonus as well… Franklin absolutely loves the snow and it is impossible to be a grinch when his delight is so overwhelming!
A new book of poetry by Billy Collins – Water, Water: Poems – has been much on my mind recently, especially the poem I am sharing today. And when Ann Shayne read it last week at the inaugural MDK Society Zoom, it cemented it for this month’s selection! I hope you enjoy it too!
Winter Trivia
by Billy Collins
It takes approximately two hours for a snowflake to fall from a cloud to the ground.
—THE BOOK OF TRIVIA
In the roughly two hours
it takes for a snowflake
to fall from a cloud to the ground,
we managed to get back to the house,
bang the snow off our boots,
shake out our coats in the mudroom,
then stoke the stove back to life,
open a bottle of wine—
I think it was a red from Oregon—
heat the white bean soup from last night,
which we spooned up
sitting close to the splintering stove,
after which we carried our bowls
to the kitchen and opened
an inlaid wooden box full of chips
and fanned out a fresh deck of playing cards,
which you shuffled and I cut,
as the house was warming up,
and you tossed in a modest bet
with a red Jack showing
and I saw you with my nine
just as that singular snowflake
landed without a sound
in the general darkness of Vermont.
Winter Trivia Copyright © by Billy Collins.
You can learn more about Billy Collins here and here.
I would like to thank Bonny for gathering us all together today to share a bit of poetry!
See you all back here on Monday!
A bit of a post script… I have been having issues posting comments on some of your WordPress blogs. I am not sure why just some of the WordPress blogs and not all WordPress blogs and I have yet to figure out the issue. If I have not commented on your blogs this week, this is the reason… if anyone is having issues posting comments to my blog, please let me know (you can email me here). Thanks!
Hi, Kat,
I’m submitted my email to you, so you can send me yours, if you want to. Then I can add your name to my subscribers.
I love this poem! I read that Billy Collins volume as an ARC a while ago, and I have mostly forgotten about it. That is a mistake, which you and this poem have fixed and I will re-read some of his poems today. I’ll think a little more kindly towards those snowflakes taking their long and arduous journey while Billy eats bean soup!
Ha! I almost chose this poem to post today…but then decided on a very short (but sweet) poem by Ted Kooser. “Water, Water” is such a wonderful volume of poetry (and I have yet to read a book of Billy Collins’ poems that do not touch me in a very positive way).
I love that!! (And I didn’t know that about snowflakes.)
Brilliant! It really evokes the feelings of winter. (I don’t love the snow and the cold, but I hope the fact that we’re having more of a real winter this year means an easier allergy season!)
oh, I do love winter so a winterish poem is right up my alley!!
What a beautiful poem about winter. I love the way Collins and other poets add little details to tell a story in such a short space. White bean soup in front of the warm stove – delicious.