This cold is awful, how did the temperature get down there so low? Doubtless it slipped down there by sneaking past us, all hunched over and dressed in the black cloak of night. Because just the other morning we were shocked to awake freezing; and then strolled out to find this world of white, wintry magic: snow falling, hosts of hailstones bouncing, and even our spit suspended. Surely it's time now to make a decision which is truly a matter of life or death: whether to start to make plans to leave right now, in search of some other, far warmer, friendlier and generally  more congenial climate--or, if we aren't in a position to depart, whether to try to come to terms with the intermittently drastic and yes alas, even sheer life-threatening iciness each of us occasionally experiences all around us, by becoming a snowman--which is to say, the kind of person who only grows when it snows.

Earlier versions of these poems originally appeared in Night Cries (Wesleyan UniversityPress, l976),  copyright Michael Benedikt l976. Benedikt,  whose work is widely represented on the web, and who's cited by About.com as "Poet Laureate of The Net," is the author of 5 books of poetry: The Body, Sky, Mole Notes, Night Cries and most recently, The Badminton At Great Barrington. He's also the editor of several landmark anthologies of poetry and plays including The Poetry of Surrealism and The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. URL: http://members. aol.com/benedit1/miniweb.html Guide to Michael Benedikt Mini-Web

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