why is it not snowing?

At lunch today, I popped outside for a quick lap around the building.

This would not be an unusual statement in June or even September.

But in January? In January, we're supposed to spend our lunch hours holed up in front of a space heater, eating soup and talking about when we used to see the sun.

Okay, that's a bit dire and not really the truth.

But here is the truth: it's winter, I live in the Midwest, and I would like some dang snow.

Some darn snow.

Some damn snow.

I am upset enough about the lack of winter to progressively work my way towards a bad word.

Since tomorrow is predicted to be just as nice, I've decided to do the literary equivalent of a rain dance.

Except in this case, it's a snow dance. And I won't really be dancing.

The literary equivalent of a rain dance—but for snow—is Thomas Hardy's "Snow in the Suburbs." This is especially apropos because I live in the suburbs.

If everyone reads this three times {perhaps chanting?}, maybe tomorrow I'll wake up to snow.

If that doesn't happen, then I'm going to start a giant sing-along of the song "Snow" from White Christmas. You've been warned.

Snow in the Suburbs
Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.