So Much for the Mind of Winter (finally a reply to Wallace Stevens)

Today we've had a severe winter storm - the picture alongside was taken this afternoon of the laurels in our front yard on the point of unconditional surrender. All day we have been pounded with heavy winds and wet snow, so far more than a foot has accumulated.  It's the hardest kind of snow to remove - sodden and clinging to the shovel.  After doing my best to clear the driveway for the second time, I went for a walk out to the dock on Bay Avenue (where I retraced the steps I have taken on several such occasions before)  and had a chance to write the following poem:

So Much for the Mind of Winter (or finally I get straight on my reply to Wallace Stevens' Snowman)

There is nothing

Quite as scouring

Or uplifting as a severe

Winter storm out here

On the East End

The east bank

Of the Creek is

All but invisible now

In the driving snow

As I walk to the end of the dock

On the Bay Avenue pier the wind 

Tears through successive layers 

Getting subcutaneous soon

Enough in its lacerations

And soon too my fingers are 

Burning or else completely numbed

Just from writing a few words down

On my notebook's wet page

This is the kind

Of winter storm that

Great Russian poets

Used to extol about 

When a horse can get lost 

And expire only a few yards

Outside the front gate

It’s no longer a matter

Of fine poetic diction

I’d much rather be

Nice and warm back home

As opposed to any more

Exposed to the north wind 

Leaving off altogether
Any further cultivation of  

This frickin' mind of winter