[Janice D. Soderling]

I don't know if it is because I am presently so into Chas. Dickens, but this pastoral sonnet opened to a perfect mood of nostalgia as winter slowly releases its grip where I live (not England, though mentally I am transported to that noble small island).

I admire the idea that light drizzles, and the poem slowly drizzles through my mind like a lovely late winter mist sliding down a snowy hill, brief and nearly tangible.

I admire that the author uses "flaxen light" to circumvent "flaxen strands" while cleverly making us aware of the latter term. Possibly there are many city-dwellers who have no idea what flax looks like, but it is very much like blond hair, of a subdued yellow a little less bright than straw. The nuances of color (flaxen, snow, birches, beige on white, straw, yellow locks, brindled by shadows, ghostly dark, golden fleece, snowy pillows, yellow strands, glow, hay) are important here in a small-scale setting appropriate to small children. It makes me want to hold my breath so as not to disturb the shifting nuances of color.

My heart warms at the idea of sheep standing "still as haybales". I have to praise the sounds of "shepherd with a shoulderful of straw", and "then hastens homeward", and "strew/straw. I am admiring of children's minds woolgathering, "tales of happenstance". The snow drifts, the children drift in dreams, their hair drifts on the pillows.

Admittedly this sonnet is hard to title, and I find the title bland and wish the poet had not used a hyphen, but these are worldly things and easily fixed, should the poet care to do so.

Apart from the title, not a single word is awry, or dips into banality, though it easily could in the hands of someone less aware of what they were doing.

All this emanating from the idea of a man tossing out straw onto snow and his children snug on their pillows. Behold! This is how a Poet sees the world.