sotto voce

The farm has been hushed by snow.

I don't know how or why the snow fringed the sumac from below. I call that 'under voice.' (Click on image to enlarge.)

Pines and spruces bent with weight greater than their own.

This wild grape tendril has been holding this twig more than a year. It hangs over the path like a talisman to itself. The pine needles attached themselves this season. (Click on the image to see it better.)

Do these look like diamond rings to you:

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The birds became busier.

Even a few honey bees whispered as they emerged from their tree home. I don't know why they came out. Although this one is dead, I saw one alive, stuttering across the snow.

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Here is one of the loveliest poems ever written. I imagine it in sotto voce, like the farm under snow. It's by Wallace Stevens.

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The Snow Man

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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.