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!

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