THE FIRST SNOWFALL

    

COUNTRY ROAD

Tuesday, 9:00 AM.  30 degrees F at the ferry dock, 27 on the back porch.  Wind NW, mostly calm with light to moderate gusts,  The sky is cloudy and overcast, the humidity 76%.  The barometer stands at 30.04" and has begun to fall, predicting rain and snow sowers today and tomorrow, with high temperatures in the mid 30's.
    The first snowfall of the season is usually cotton candy soft, a merry harbinger of pleasant holidays and good times.
    The first snowfall of this winter season came in on a Nor'easter howling like a banshee.  It put me in a rather uncustomary funk.
     2017 started out badly, with the tragic death of my friend and business associate Jay, who was crushed to death by a huge cottonwood tree he was felling.  Sad news continued on through the seasons with the deaths of cousins and several close friends.
      This beautiful poem by Lowell suits my mood.


                                                         THE FIRST SNOWFALL
                                                             Robert Russell Lowell

THE SNOW had begun in the gloaming,   And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway   With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock   Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree   Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara   Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan’s-down,   And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window   The noiseless work of the sky, And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,   Like brown leaves whirling by. I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn   Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently,   As did robins the babes in the wood. Up spoke our own little Mabel,   Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?” And I told of the good All-father   Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall,   And thought of the leaden sky That arched o’er our first great sorrow,   When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience   That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding   The scar that renewed our woe. And again to the child I whispered,   “The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father   Alone can make it fall!” Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;   And she, kissing back, could not know That my kiss was given to her sister,   Folded close under deepening snow.

I herewith put my melancholy behind me, and promise to get in  a better mood.