Poem of the Week, by Wallace Stevens
My new poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.
Late night. Eight inches of heavy wet flakes. Sound of shovels up and down the block. The specific silence of air that comes only with snow.
Lifelong northerner that I am, snow is part of my earliest memories. Snow so deep my sisters and I could walk right up onto the roof of the garage and slide down the other side.
When I go to California in January, the way I do now, I think about snow. Dream of it. Miss the way, when you breathe in that cold, cold air, your whole body feels clear. Winter is something I’ve both loved and dreaded (S.A.D.) my whole life. But these days, on this melting planet, winter feels like a treasure always mine in such measure that I was heedless with it.
The Snow Man, by 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.
For more information about Wallace Stevens, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com
Last week I woke up on a cold and windy day and did my own tiny triathlon: jog, kayak, bike. I did this only for myself, for the hell of it, no time pressure, no expectations, no one watching. The jog went well. The kayaking was hard (the wind was so strong it was all I could do to keep from going backward). By the time I got to the bike portion I decided to keep it simple and just ride around the same lake four times like a hamster on a wheel, which was ridiculous and made me laugh. But when I finished my tiny anonymous tri I felt so unexpectedly happy. So grateful for these muscles and bones and heart and lungs. How great and wonderful it is to be alive inside a body.
Sometimes I feel so sad for men. All the unspoken rules. All the ways our culture tries to train boys out of their openness, their gentleness, their human need for hugs and touch. I think of the multiple men I know who have told no one but me the ways they were sexually abused as children. I think of my giant of a father, and the look on his face when he told me how his mother used to scream at him when he was little. I think of all the men I know who depend on the women they love to translate the world of emotion for them, to navigate the nuances of relationships. I think of how sex sometimes seems the only acceptable way for a man to give and receive physical affection, the only time they can let down their guard. 
Alison McGhee 