A LIGHT IN WINTER by Eric G. Wilson

THIS IS AN EDITED VERSION.FULL ARTICLE IS PUBLISHED IN HERALD TRIBUNE (NOVEMBER 6, 2009)

On March 16, 2002, when daffodils were swaying in the slowly warming wind of a North Carolina spring, I found myself in a snug hospital room with my wife and just-born daughter, only hours old, and I thought of ice.

A poem called "Frost at Midnight," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was on my mind. In this verse, written in 1798, Coleridge sits near his infant son, Hartley, on a winter night in England. He...