I’ve been having trouble sleeping this last week, waking up at 4:00 or so and not being able to get back to sleep. Last night my eyes popped open at 2:00; around 4:00 I got tired of turning over and got up to have some tea (mmm, valerian). Just to get my mind on something other than not sleeping, I picked up the big poetry anthology and found some Wallace Stevens, which I read while looking out the window at the snow.
“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.
Then the valerian made me dizzy and I went back to bed, where I eventually fell asleep on my stomach and woke up with a neck ache. But it’s a nice poem, huh?