Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is a classic of modern poetry and clearly influenced by Japanese haiku, which was just beginning to intrigue American poets and writers in the early 1900’s. Also, the poem’s a long-time favorite of mine.

During today’s snowstorm, this stanza from the poem comes to mind:

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

“It was snowing / And it was going to snow.” Ah, winter in Maine.

all day snow

a white fox emerging

from a dream