January

by Hilaire Belloc

It freezes- all across a soundless sky
The birds go home. The governing dark's begun:
The steadfast dark that waits not for a sun;
The ultimate dark wherein the race shall die.

Death, with his evil finger to his lip,
Leers in at human windows, turning spy
To learn the country where his rule shall lie
When he assumes perpetual generalship.

The undefeated enemy, the chill
That shall benumb the voiceful earth at last,
Is master of our moment, and has bound
The viewless wind it-self. There is no sound.
It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast.
It freezes; and the graven twigs are still.

I can hear all my friends telling me to quit the hyperbole.

And I can hear myself telling them right back, "But I'm from California!" Yes, I know that San Francisco is chilly, that it snows in the Sierra Nevada - thus the name - but I only go to those places once in a blue moon.

There's been a little skiff of snow since I got back, but it's all melted now. I'm started to get disapointed. If I'm gonna be cold, I want to have some pretty snow to look at.

I hope it won't be windy for the March. But if it is, we can offer it up, naturally.