In “Approach to Winter,” the poet elects not to subject the accidental arrangement of trees, leaves, and garden he sees to layers of meaning. Instead, the poet shares the images rather than explain, making the poem less about the natural world’s slow edge into winter and more about that resilient energy of wonder, a gift not just of poets but of everyone with a grasping imagination, everyone with an eye upon which nothing is lost.

The theme then is for each of us to live in expectation of similar moments, moments unforced, unexpected, moments when the world all around us suddenly, mysteriously but clearly speak to us. They are not necessarily beautiful moments —the arrangement here is harsh, even forbidding—and not necessarily only in nature—Williams would also dedicate poems to a green glass bottle shattered in a city alley, a noisy fire engine roaring down the street, the light of a streetlamp clouded by moths. Those moments are our right, and in a contemporary world where thoughts of the afterlife can seem confusing and obsolete, those moments snatched can be heaven-enough. Not opening up to even the expectation of wonder, then, can be hell-enough.