Ruth Jewell's "A Winter Walk" follows a speaker walking through falling snow toward the woods, and the whole poem is about paying attention. The opening lines are soft and slow, with flakes brushing the speaker's cheeks and footprints pressed into untouched snow. The short lines make the reader move at a walking pace.
The woods are first described as silent, but the poem keeps finding small sounds inside that silence: children shouting happily on a sledding hill, clumps of snow thumping down from branches, and a chickadee whose song rings "like a bell." Each one seems bigger because everything around it is so quiet. Even the passing walker, who nods and says nothing, seems to share an unspoken agreement not to break the calm.
The speaker's feeling is contentment, close to gratitude. The repeated "what joy, what joy" and the closing sigh, "ah the quiet of a winter wood," leave a peaceful, gentle mood.