You will be asking what the winter means.
A crack,
A crackle,
A lament.
The flat, sad surface of the earth
Stuck in the ice
That traps a pond.
The green gone gray and white
Alone
Or clothed
As if the crystals of the sky
Had slipped their tassels,
Slid the flimsy loom
And flapped like gulls and eagles
To the ground.
Moments of muteness
When no sight or sound but what comes with us
Dawdles in the glade,
The sounds sucked outward by the space
Between the grains of grounded firmament.
The chance of quiet in the grove,
The roads mere motions over rise
And so no more a measure of the world
Or its slow paces in the searing wind
Than pulse or breath,
Which also slow and still.
It is the restless resting revving up
Between the quick flags of the chase,
The soulless solace sloping to a rage
Of curled up crimsons
Bleeding green;
The ice cube cooling in the fire,
The cold cup sweating by the sea.
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For more by Mark, and additional links, go here.
Photo “Winter Landscape 3” via Wikimedia Commons.
Wilderness Interface Zone 