Three beautiful things from my previous week:

1. The frost on the upstairs bathroom screen at my parents’ resembles a hedgehog.

2. A friend is pregnant.

3. I overshot my intended destination by a metro stop and decided to right the problem on foot, rather than waiting for a train heading back the opposite direction. Since there were Girl Scouts outside selling cookies, clearly the universe meant for me to get off in Ballston instead of at my usual stop.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi returned from his coaching trip on Sunday. Sure it was with a bad head cold, but it was nice to have him home to use up all the tissues I bought on sale while he was away.

2. We were shorthanded for coaching this week, so I ended up on the dodgeball side, rather than with my usual volleyball kids. As were packing up all the equipment at the end, Beth told me that during her check-in with the kids at the beginning one girl had raised her hand to demand to know where I was.

3. Jeff Bezos gutted the Washington Post‘s reporting staff this week, so I canceled my years-long subscription. I want to support savvy journalism and understand how crucial it is to democracy for independent newspapers to survive. But integral to that is actually employing reporters and covering local news. I am beyond disappointed, but feel buoyed that I have sent a message.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Once upon a time, bloggers used to share poetry on February 2nd to mark St. Brigid’s Day and the Imbolc festival, which span the first couple days of February and mark, like Groundhog Day and Candlemas, the midway point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.

Largely, the practice has faded away, but I’m fond of it, so today you get a poem by Billy Collins, which I think may resonate with a certain number of us in the wake of the last week:

Shoveling Snow With Buddha
    ~Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

In previous years, I’ve shared poems by Vadim Kagan, Tom Disch, Sharon Olds, Emily Dickinson, Kyle Dargan, Barbara Crooker, William Stafford, Mary Oliver (twice), Wislawa Szymborska, Stuart Dischell, Jean Esteve, John Frederick Nims, Grace Paley, Heather McHugh, and Barbara Hamby, all of which are worth another read.