Winter and After

Because all the birds do not fall

frozen from the trees,

and the squirrels do wake in time, most of them,

from their torpor, to the memory of nuts

under the snow lying inert for the whole bitter season;

and because after the duck-hunters return

to their snug sheets, the pond

lets off its own beneficent fusillade

while the Great and Little Bears

stalk undeterred across their galactic tundra by night;

and because we refuse to slow our blood

when the anonymity of white

scrawls over all the signatures of life,

we determine to keep hope warm,

until the wind changes,

the sun shrugs into a closer plane,

and a plinking music rouses the woods

as meltwater unrivets the lid of winter,

and we remember: soon there will be singing.