I have always loved winter. The real winter, when cold November rains and howling winds change into hard frosts every morning. Your face and hands go numb in the ice cold drafts. Everything falls silent apart from the familiar crunching sound under your feet when you walk on freshly fallen snow. These are my memories from my childhood in Czechoslovakia. With move to England I lost those magical moments in snowy white wonderland. The weather here is so much milder. December is almost like continuation of dreary November days. However gradually I learnt how to love the different sides of winter and how to find beauty in every one of them. And when I happen to experience brief spells of frost and mist, or even snow, I appreciate them even more than ever before.

Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream.

Vera Nazarian

some winters will never melt
some summers will never freeze
and some things will only … live in poems.

Sanober Khan

Overnight, a giant spilt icing sugar on the ground,
He spilt it in the hedgerows, and the trees without a sound,
He made a wedding-cake of the haystack in the field,
He dredged the countryside and the grass was all concealed,
He sprinkled sugar on the roofs, in patches not too neat,
And in the morning when we woke, the world around was sweet.

Valerie Bloom

December is a bewitching month.
The grey of cold teases
to explode into something worthwhile,
into a dream of cold,
a starlight shower you can taste,
a cold that does not chill.

I've lost my memory
of my first snow -
did I gasp at a field of white?
Or scream at the freeze
until my cheeks reddened?

The crunch underfoot is satisfying
and the thrill of virgin snow
near leaves.

Joseph Coelho

There is something incredibly irresistible in walking in freshly fallen snow. The whiteness softens your footsteps, and if you listen carefully, you will hear how beautiful the silence is.

Silence can always be broken by the sound
Of footsteps walking over frozen ground
In winter when the melancholy trees
Stand abject and let their branches freeze

Merrill Moore

The countryside lies silently
Beneath a pristine quilt of snow,
In darkness waiting patiently
For dawn to cast its rosy glow.

The sun illuminates the earth,
As slowly-waking creatures see
The vision of a day’s rebirth:
A wonderland, a fantasy.

Mary T. Hoffman

In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
but he’s restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.

So, it’s over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he’s done all he can.

I don’t know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—

which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.

Mary Oliver

December’s wintery breath is already clouding the pond, frosting the pane, obscuring summer’s memory…

John Geddes

It is deep January. The sky is hard.
The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

It is in this solitude, a syllable,
Out of these gawky flitterings,

Intones its single emptiness,
The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

Wallace Stevens

Because the birdsong might be pretty,
But it's not for you they sing,
And if you think my winter is too cold,
You don't deserve my spring.

Erin Hanson

Hello winter! My heart is warm and ready to enjoy your cool loving touch of beauty and splendor.

Debasish Mridha

Softening of winter -
rustling of leaves,
glittering afternoons,
Sweet February!

Meeta Ahluwalia

Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.

Mary Oliver

Aren’t you cold and won’t you freeze,
With branches bare, you winter trees?
You’ve thrown away your summer shift,
Your autumn gold has come adrift.

Dearie me, you winter trees,
What strange behaviour, if you please!
In summer you could wear much less,
But come the winter – you undress!

George Szirtes

Snow harder! Snow more!
Snow blizzards galore!
I can’t get enough
Of the fluffy white stuff!
Snow! Snow! Snow!
Snow a ton! Snow a heap!
Snow ten feet deep!
I wouldn’t cry
If it snowed til July.
Snow! Snow! Snow!

Paul Kortepeter

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Elinor Wylie

She loved dreaming of a different world, but she also loved winter. She was a child of winter and thus, she belonged to the cold and harsh nature of the season.

Natalia Ćwiklińska