I love it when the nights get cold enough to justify flannel sheets and down comforters. There’s just something reassuring about having a chill surround you, but remaining untouchable because you are hugged by the impervious warmth of your covers. It does, however, make getting out of bed in the morning even more difficult.

Tonight’s forecast predicts rain/snow showers. While I’m definitely not ready for winter, the weather has brought this poem to mind this morning:

Relearning Winter

Hello Winter, hello flanneled

blanket of clouds, clouds

fueled by more clouds, hello again.

Hello afternoons,

off to the west, that sliver

of sunset, rust-colored

and gone too soon.

And night (I admit to a short memory)

you climb back in with chilly fingers

and clocks, and there is no refusal:

ice cracks the water main, the garden hose

stiffens, the bladed leaves of the rhododendron

shine in the fog of a huge moon.

And rain, street lacquer,

oily puddles and spinning rubber,

mist of angels on the head of a pin,

hello,

and snow, upside-down cake of clouds,

white, freon scent, you build

even as you empty the world of texture-

hello to this new relief,

this new solitude now upon us,

upon which we feed.

-Mark Svenvold