A CRACKLING FIRE, AND STILL NOTHING TO SAY

While there is no way to authenticate this, short of having the pressmen smudge ash on each copy off the line, this is a bona-fide, guaranteed-never-to-tarnish, written-by-the-fireplace column. No extra charge.

For writer types like me, there is supposed to be a degree of occupational romance in this. All the literary inspiration one should need can be found in that mixture of heat and smoke and crackling. To complete the picture, you need a large window outside looking upon a broad, rustic porch and a wooded hillside with the qualities of a cover design for an L.L. Bean winter catalog. Plus, a fresh blanket of snow. This latter item I have.

Moved by the spirit of this idea, if not exactly aesthetic in execution, I dragged up a kitchen chair so I could be close to the fire, then a piano bench on which I set a small computer.

And ...

OK, it takes more than this to wax poetic on winter. Maybe the laptop was too much. Maybe I needed a quill pen and legal pad for the proper inspiration. Maybe some of that music John Tesh favors should have been playing. Maybe New England is the only place this works.

Others have done better with this task. Ralph Waldo Emerson called snow "frolic architecture." A 17th century Prayer Book says the Lord "giveth snow like wool; and scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes." William Shakespeare wrote in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" of "hot ice and wondrous strange snow."

In a more somber reflection, W.H. Auden wrote "snow disfigured the public statues; the mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day."

Beautiful, just beautiful.

And even though extreme conditions sometimes stimulate high artistic achievement, the best I could come up with regarding winter is a rather coarse analogy about the coldness of a welldigger's posterior.

So it isn't exactly Dylan Thomas. Or even Thurman Thomas.

The fact is I relate to cold weather, and particularly snow, with emotions ranging from reconciled indifference to aggravated grunts and mumbled curses. From such attitudes are not sublime poetry born.

Some of this disposition might stem from my advancing years. As a young man, the notion of spinning tires -- even spinning vehicles -- held more of a fascination for me.

Snows I once embraced now find me timid. Clay feet don't do well on ice.

When I was a teacher in the St. Louis area, I possessed an educator's customary appreciation of snow. Overnight, by mere caprice of nature, you are granted a day away from your duties.

Our staff had a snow tree, meaning the principal called two faculty members with news of a cancellation, who called other teachers, and so on. If you were at the farthest edge of the tree, and were on the list to be called by a colleague you liked, the two of you would stay on the phone at 5 a.m., chatting for a half-hour and delighting in the fact you wouldn't have to get up early.

In the partly rural district where I taught, the days off were plentiful during a harsh winter. Yet, the roads where I lived, closer to the city, were often clear, meaning you could spend the day lunching with friends, attending a matinee or congregating for cards at a colleague's house.

Again, those were younger days. The people at my office now show up whether it's snowing or not. My wife, though still a teacher, is fitful in her enjoyment of winter storms. Children in the house might contribute to this view. The first day off was greeted warmly. Near the end of the second day off, I heard her use the word "incarceration."

Time for some melting.

Talk about the weather this time of year is dependent on the obvious. "It's supposed to get cold," someone will say. Of course it's supposed to, you think, it's winter.

That's all the idle talk we need. Enough with winter. We've felt the cold, we've seen the snow. Enough. We've done it, shoveled it, thrown it, rolled it, slipped on it, sledded in it, damned it. The experience is satisfactory for another year.

I'm tired of The Weather Channel, which regards skiing as the nation's only sport. I'm tired of hoping the distant engine I hear is bringing sand and salt to my street.

I hate sleet, I hate drifts, I hate wind chills, I hate thermal socks, I hate slush ... though I would settle for some slush right now.

Every snowflake is different, they say. So what! It is fodder for greeting card companies and feel-good wall hangings. Who checks?

The heck with winter verse. I know some poems about spring.

No more snow, get it? That's it. Enough.

(And for such an outburst and ultimatum concerning a divine act, I've probably just condemned the region to a blizzard. Rhyme that.)

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.