Think Snow!

POLAR BEAR
—William Carlos Williams

his coat resembles the snow
deep snow
the male snow
which attacks and kills

silently as it falls muffling
the world
to sleep that
the interrupted quiet return

to lie down with us
its arms
about our necks
murderously a little while

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100° and counting! This is when our friends in more comely climes get to make fun of us, as we swelter away, air conditioners pumping. "One must have the mind of winter", as Wallace Stevens says. Think winter! Send me your poems about winter before midnight Tuesday (6/27) and I'll send you a surprise. kathykieth@hotmail.com, or (postmarked) P.O. Box 1647, Orangevale, CA 95662.

Getting Your Mind Off the Heat:

•••Today (6/24), Friends of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library will hold a book sale from 9 AM-4 PM, 7340 24th St. Bypass, Sac. Info: 916-264-2920.

•••Also today (Saturday, 6/24), The Freedom Equity Group presents "The Show" Poetry Series, featuring Brett "B-Free" Freeman, Twa'Lea Randolph, Heather Christian, Mia Sousa—plus a very special drop-in guest, JUDAH 1, from the 2005 LA Slam Team, and a visit from Fort Worth Texas Slam Team member Michael Guinn. Plus, Single Fathers’ Appreciation Night: 20 single fathers will be given free gifts, and the first five will be admitted free! Wo'se Community Center (Off 35th and Broadway), 2863 35th St., Sac., 7-9 PM. $5. Info: 916-455-POET. "The Show" Poetry Series is co-sponsored by the Freedom Equity Group and Gatdula’s King Eagles Karate.

•••Monday (6/26), Sacramento Poetry Center presents: A Night of Translation: James Den Boer reading works translated from Latin, Arturo Mantecon reading from Spanish, and Nguyen Do from Vietnamese. Host: Tim Kahl. 7:30 PM, SPC/HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts. Info: 451-5569. Free.

_______________________

BLIZZARD IIN CAMBRIDGE
—Robert Lowell

Risen from the blindness of teaching to bright snow,
everything mechanical stopped dead,
taxis no-fares...the wheels grow hot from driving—
ice-eyelashes, in my spring coat; the subway
too jammed and late to stop for passengers;
snow-trekking the mile from subway end to airport...
to all-flights-cancelled, fighting queues congealed
to telephones out of order, stamping buses,
rich, stranded New Yorkers staring with the wild, mild eyes
of steers at the foreign subway—then the train home,
jolting with stately grumbling: an hour in Providence,
in New Haven...the Bible. In darkness seeing
white arsenic numbers on the tail of a downed plane,
the smokestacks of abandoned fieldguns burning skyward.

________________________

THE SNOW MAN
—Wallace Stevens

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.

_______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)