Cold Writing

"One must have a mind of winter /To regard the frost and the boughs /Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;" from "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens, 1921

Winter is the sole literate season

Its frosty phraseology abounds

Legible are its crisp forms by reason

From cold and water, it symbols compounds

Why then, does cold writing scare so many?

Cold can destroy, but mostly, it preserves

Notes and research? Winter hasn’t any

Being itself, in its own cool way, serves

Frost makes its forms, its fractal family

Without a scheme or plot deliberate;

Cold manifests itself, and so simply

Makes water freeze, like ink made coherent

Let your mind be winter, frosting the ink

Freeze what flows to represent what you think