Today I have two poems to offer, one my own, but deeply indebted to Wallace Stevens’ poem, “The Snow Man.” Really, that poem could be about the ice fishermen who sit, always alone, on the small ponds and lakes around here throughout December, when the ice is not quite thick enough to haul a shack out onto the ice with a truck. I believe I saw the first one the first week of December.
The Ice Man
One must have a mind of winter
— Wallace Stevens
He is there in December, early,
as soon as the ice can hold a deer or a man,
but not a truck. He is there sitting on an overturned bucket,
his auger beside him. He is there, single, motionless,
and slightly ridiculous in the late afternoon
when the sky is already pink, the low temperature dropping,
or in the grey afternoon. He faces away from the road.
Sometimes he sees only grey shore and grey sky and grey surface.
Sometimes the only mark is the hole he drilled, his line.
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.