Ice Storm

The mist falls all night

all day a gray sky

each green needle

each red berry

each stone

each twig

encased

like

Venetian

millefiore

in a Victorian

paperweight

missing only

the outer globe

of a stark blue sky

shaking sugar white snow

over sun glistened ice

and a snow-day child

gazing upward

outward

beyond

the glass

at myself.

mist

dew glistened orbs

each magnify the morning

light the lines of every twig

Reader

Water ripples against the ice foam

crackling like someone paging quickly

through thin pages to a new season.

Neighborhood Competition

Each morning

the Big Dipper pours winter into the woods behind our home.

Every night

Orion struts haughtily overhead

hot on the trail of constellations mammalian while

almost invisible, the Pleiades sisters giggle at him.

Beneath these ancient lights

our house is a riot of disorganized sparkles vying for attention,

the familiar to all,

Christmas Constellation.

What is in the Waiting ...

of yellow-spotted salamanders until vernal pools thaw

and mud-hoveled green frogs silent beneath frozen ponds

of the six years underground seven-year cicada

and the pendulant chrysalis on ice-glistened grasses

of great horned owls invisible between nocturnal catches

and deer still and staring between camouflaging branches

of empty lined pages between inspirations

and blank white minds between imaginations?

December Warming

a warm night

with soft rain and

ground clouds

nestled near wetlands



a warm night

when tree frogs, lumpy

toads, and bullfrogs

could be sounding



a warm night

not in but out of season

all those sleeping,

unlike me, quiescent.

December First

Now grass

then snow,

now earth

then ice;

Autumn falls

to Solstice bite.

Wild November

at seventeen a

surprise, at twenty four an

excessive herd heard

gobbling

scratching

poking

peering

crowding

creeping

down slopes

up hills

over hummocks

under brush

at twenty four

much too much

Crowing About Themselves

Sharp black branches reach

up through leafy flames.

Crows have arrived for winter.

Well, have been here all along

but have come to claim the cold

for themselves.

Caws reeling between

their glistening jagged wings,

caws falling among the fallen leaves.



They strut our lawn

leather-feather jacketed

tall and loud and proud

all year,

but once the musical birds,

the trillers and chippers,

fly away following invisible light trails,

the crows have so much more to crow about.



Today

even for clattering crows

they are harrassment personified

diving into the still-green leafed oak,

over and over,

over each other.



Then I see him

still

broad-breasted

feather mass

unperturbed

head tilting

efficiently

left

to right

to left.

No crows on him.



A hawk

to whom crows

have no importance,

no doubt inedible,

and it drives them

just plain mad.

If crows could howl

they would.

Messengers of Fall

Autumn tip toes

in the dark of night

tapping down early leaves

one here, one there

to be dusted with dew

to be found and plucked

up by the hand of a child

to be hand-carried

to show, to share

with classmates.

Song

Spring
peepers

now summer-singers,

though
autumnal chills fill

some nights
now,

this morning’s
night

(no early
light)

adds gentle
rain

to humming
song.