all pictures of poets are gray
and cold like handled dusty brooms
like staves that wait at iron dooryards
to clean up attics of being-sold barns
and houses where children cry in their beds.

i put on gray some years ago
a volunteer of duty, not joy
i was the reluctant doorbelling boy
and rarely i roamed beyond it.

winter's messengers are legion crows
its implements: charcoal smoke and snow
winter and company built a monopoly
over the hemisphere whole; no man
gave them permission. God did.

summertime sometimes gives rust
often the sun shines on ashes and dust
but, on the far side of a mountain
one evergreen pine sprite fountain
in the heart of a Maine May
can fill up our lungs with day
and free us this moment from gray.