This is the midget snowman Ben and I built outside our house yesterday afternoon, with red kidney beans for eyes, a green pepper for a nose, four red chili peppers for a mouth, my maroon scarf wrapped around its head and neck, and Maita's fluffy green gloves on sticks for hands. We've baptized him Bobby. Look at Bobby lounging on the plastic lawn chair. Notice that he's naked where it matters. See him snicker while giving the world the finger. That's our Bobby.

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.