Another snowy sunrise spent wondering when the plow guy will show up. From the looks of it, we got 8 or 10 inches last night, yet the boys insisted on wearing their sneakers to the bus stop. Gone are the days of the parental boot-and-snowpants ultimatum. These boys would rather have pneumonia than be seen on a school bus in winter boots. I try to be understanding, for I recall my own parallel issues with a woolly hat, not to mention long underwear, which my mother believed was obligatory from October through April. Myself, I would have rather have been knifed through the heart.

And here is a most excellent poem for the season--a poem that John Frederick Nims says "may be the best winter poem in English." (Nims makes this claim in Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, which is an fine anthology/technical guide . . . and I say this as a person who kind of hates both anthologies and technical guides.)

Winter,  from Love's Labour's Lost

William Shakespeare

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipped and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-whit to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marion's nose looks red and raw;

And roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-whit to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.