The Comfort Of Snow Poem by Peter Wainwright

A white blanket smooth and crumpled
Decides to lay itself over the land, on the high hills
Drifting into deep hollows
Shaking itself out onto the roads, the lanes
Wanting to wrap away the dirt, to add colour to a drab leafless wood
To settle on twigs until the blackbird tips the snow to the ground as it pushes off and up and away to the next branch, twig, rooftop.

The snow quiets our loud thoughts
Becomes the Christmas cake with no decorations
Becomes a consistent comfort
With its multicolour of white. Whatever shade it's white - it could be no other colour.

Even that storm of snow ends with a cushion of quiet, perhaps the wind howling over the top.

Looking carefully I see a robin hopping down to the small hole of hope in the deep snow, scrabbling for grubs.

As it falls, we have to see the snow to believe it, and we hear the muffling its flakes bring outside the warm home.

In a week or month or more, snow will slowly slush away, but some will stay all year in the high hollows, the high valleys, packed intosuch depths, capping the mountain with a curling cornice.