White Winter-tide

Black to blue to white you dawn

Morning-tide on winter’s lawn

Cimmerian undertones

Wind, frost-knuckled moans and groans

Testing sashes, vexing shores

Lending light twixt swinging doors

Where dawn-break and dusk soon meet

In a night-day-fall repeat

Every hill and rill and rim

Clad in snow-song seraphim

Now we covet things like gold

Not the kind that we can hold

But the kiss of sun and such

Evading cold winter’s touch

Where a dolor morning-tide

Tiptoes over countryside

Tucked from tippy-toe to chin

Beneath Old Man Winter’s grin

White on white on white foray

Spiked perhaps by tree-sprig-gray

Once upon a greener day

We watched morning wend its way

Like a lady, finely-dressed

In turquoise and amethyst

Spilling coral in her wake

Melting mauve across the lake

Where now, waltz of winter-tide

Petrifies the countryside

Lingering to spill its mirth

White on white on white-capped earth

© Janet Martin