I believe I saw bare ground one week ago, a brief respite from the thick and never-ending snow that’s permeated our lives for the past 3 months. Snow, no more! We’re all tired of taking the photos you expect in your city newspaper: kids playing in snow, persons shoveling or snow-blowing, snowplows circling in packs as they rip up pavement in an effort to clear the streets. The latitude difference between my Kansas childhood and my Illinois post-college life is minimal, but enough.

The latest storm brought brilliant flashes of pink/red lightning, known as “thundersnow.” Although more common in the north, it seemed slightly less common than a volcano erupting and spilling lava all over our front yard. Each strike magnifies twenty times, the reflecting snow turning the world into a giant flashbulb. The next day brought us suffocating fog, a nauseating scene that leaves you stumbling through the whiteness like a drunken sailor. If you are foolishly brave enough to travel in it, as I was forced to, fingers are crossed and prayers are said as you propel your car toward an unknown destination beyond. Will it be safe pavement or an errant bovine? Nerve-wracking, to say the least.

And so I find it appropriate to remember my childhood, when my father would read me and my sister Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” I remember him reciting it from memory at bedtime (right, dad?) It’s not a winter poem, per say, yet fits rather well. According to Wikipedia, “Jabberwocky” was meant by Carroll as a parody designed to show how not to write a poem. That original purpose was lost, obviously.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.