Be like snow
     beautiful to watch
                but hard to catch

Faith in the fall
Breathes into a warm blanket
And cold floor
Begging
More

Time in bed

To plan,
Break from what's here
See tomorrow in the new
Light streaming through
Cracks in the dark

A coffee, a car, a road
A turn in the dark,
An overhang slung low
Like that weight
We escape

Break in the forest,
Bald peak peeking through
Light shining brighter
The beacon we head to

Ice, slick, slow, quiet
Spin, twist, skid.
Skid.

The sky growing cloudy,
Lines break from the trail
Through the trees,
Which carry
All that held us down

Today we just lay fresh tracks
In the new snow

The fallen leaves are the shrouds of hoof prints,
The withers of breeze reined to time-kept trysts,
Gentilissimo, Cavalieri di Corredo, Italian knight
Whose path by pure lover’s look is made clean.

We go back, we go back to the sun caught by handfuls,
Like the Medieval snow melts into Grecian stream.

Gentle knight, to your galloping song of Winter:
The sweeping rush of grass and gathering refrain
Of bells surrounds the long sloping meadow of
The muzzle, snorting freedoms of wildflowers past,
Leaving its bosky thunderbrush of tail like distant
Summer storms and the slackening rhythms of rain.

We go back, we go back to the sun caught by handfuls,
Like the Medieval snow melts into Grecian stream.

The volplaning bird plucks from fish-eyed shallows,
A gargoyle perches on an ***** key, ever sustaining,
A woman plays the lute from man’s hollowed rib,
As the priests with sophistry sweep the dust off sin.

We go back, we go back to the sun caught by handfuls,
Like the Medieval snow melts into Grecian stream.
But the clock cannot turn its face from its tears.

Dip, scoop,
Lift, turn, throw

Repeat
Repeat
Repeat
Repeat

Clear the white
Bright and hard packed snow

Expose the sidewalk
Waiting for summer
To be covered by green clippings
And darkened by the sprinkler
Cooling on a hot day

But now uncovered
By a twisted and sore back.

The rain is falling down the winter sky
the fog is wrapped like moss around the house
a fire is burning in the stove and I
am curled up in my hole, an elder mouse
who's seen the wars and lived to tell the tale
who's belled the cat and stolen all the cheese
who's climbed the stair and slid down on the rail
who's lived through summer's heat and autumn's freeze.
That is the past, for now the days are warm
even in this winter-time of life
although I'd take the snows to rainy storms,
for burrowing beneath avoids the strife
of dodging hawks and cats, and also owls
but in the sky the future softly growls.

Scent of springtime wafts around
the road's slow curve as it nears town,
passing through low swampy ground
where the rills are running down
from the forest, deep and drear,
fog enclosing hopes and fears
for the future. Spring will come,
when winter hibernation's run
will end in waking. Life again
will rise from loamy fecund soil,
will prise from time by endless toil
a season's freedom from its chain.
The early snows have come and gone
Wet fields await the deer and fawn.