A small patch of old snow sits in a corner, and the speaker first takes it for a piece of paper the rain has blown there. That mistake matters: as the snow catches grime, it looks like newsprint, with speckles like small type. The comparison turns the snow into yesterday’s newspaper—something once clean and present, now soiled, out of place, and mostly ignored. What lingers is the speaker’s feeling of having let something slip: the “news of a day I’ve forgotten— / If I ever read it.” The mood is quiet, wry, a little melancholy. Frost catches the way ordinary things age, lose their meaning, and remain only as faint, dirty traces of a moment no one quite remembers. It is a small meditation on time, memory, and neglect.
A Patch of Old Snow — Summary
There’s a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest.
It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten-- If I ever read it.