Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, January 27th, 2025.

Today's poem is by Mary Oliver, and it's called First Snow.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.

First snow.

The snow began here this morning, and all day continued.

It's white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence, such beauty and what the

meaning, such an oracular fever.

Flowing past windows, an energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle less than lovely.

And only now, deep into night, it has finally ended.

The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold a million candles nowhere the familiar things.

Stars, the moon, the darkness we expect and nightly turn from.

Trees glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields smolder with light, a passing creek bed lies,

heaped with shining hills, and though the questions that have assailed us all day remain, not a single answer has been found, walking out now

into the silence and the light under the trees, and through the fields, feels like one.

This is an experience that is relatable and familiar to anyone who has lived in the northern climes.

Growing up in northern states, I remember vividly the first snows of particular seasons,

and even this pensive experience that they sometimes bring

about. But living now in the southeast and having just experienced an unprecedented weather

phenomenon last week, almost nine inches of snow, more than nine inches of snow here in northwest

Florida, I think this poem is particularly poignant for some of those Southerners who

have experienced snow for the first time in a long time, or maybe snow in that degree or to that

...