Finding a Voice
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
SNOW
Snowflakes are
a mystery.
Why should every perfect
crystal of snow
always have six sides
and six points?
Why should it be flat and not round
like a hailstone or raindrop?
How long does it take a crystal to form?
Why are no two crystals exactly alike?
Wilson Bentley,
of Jericho, Vermont,
photographed and examined
snowflakes for over fifty years,
and he never found
two identical flakes.
Snow can fall
from almost any kind of cloud.
It may come when the barometer is rising
or when the barometer keeps going down.
There may be snow outside your window.
The flakes will probably melt
and fall to earth in rain.
To a poet snow is a lyric.
To youngsters it means coasting
and snowball fights.
To their elders,
skiing and tobogganing.
Snow is
the exclusive property
of poets and lovers.
- a found poem from "Snow" in The New Book of Popular Science, volume 2. Grolier Inc., 1984, pp. 165-166.
a mystery.
Why should every perfect
crystal of snow
always have six sides
and six points?
Why should it be flat and not round
like a hailstone or raindrop?
How long does it take a crystal to form?
Why are no two crystals exactly alike?
Wilson Bentley,
of Jericho, Vermont,
photographed and examined
snowflakes for over fifty years,
and he never found
two identical flakes.
Snow can fall
from almost any kind of cloud.
It may come when the barometer is rising
or when the barometer keeps going down.
There may be snow outside your window.
The flakes will probably melt
and fall to earth in rain.
To a poet snow is a lyric.
To youngsters it means coasting
and snowball fights.
To their elders,
skiing and tobogganing.
Snow is
the exclusive property
of poets and lovers.
- a found poem from "Snow" in The New Book of Popular Science, volume 2. Grolier Inc., 1984, pp. 165-166.
posted by Colleen McCubbin at 11:19 PM
1 Comments:
What I especially love about the last sentence is that it is completely changed from the original, which read, "Snow is not the exclusive property of poets and lovers of science.
Clever, I thought.
(Emphasis added.)
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