'Snow slides onto snow'

In the trees near the top of Mount Kearsage.

Mount Kearsage shines with ice: from hemlock branches

snow slides onto snow; no stream, creek, or river

         budges but remains still. Tonight

                                 we carry armloads of logs

from woodshed to Glenwood and build up the fire

that keeps the coldest night outside our windows.

                             Sit by the woodstove, Jane Kenyon,

                                                              while I bring glasses of white

From "The Peepers, the Woodshed,'' by Donald Hall, a former U.S. Poet Laureate. The late Jane Kenyon, also a poet, was his wife. He lives in Wilmot, N.H., near Mount Kearsage.