As I write this, snow is falling in Mississippi.  My workplace closed due to the prediction of icy roads and treacherous weather conditions. While people in other climates may scoff, we're simply not prepared to deal with this type of rare occurrence.

Snow days . . . an unexpected gift in the middle of gray and icy winter.  A day to snuggle under the covers, drink coffee at a leisurely pace, journal, and relax.  A day to loaf without apologizing, without feeling guilty over the many tasks that *should* be done.  A day for reflecting and thinking of possibilities.  A day for poetry.

First Snow
by Mary Oliver
From New and Selected Poems: Volume One (copyright 1992)



The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain--not a single
answer has been found--
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees
and through the fields,
feels like one.

(Photo of winter in Vermont at http://www.ntoddblog.org/photos/winter/snowyfielde.html found via Google Images.)