Winter's Way

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The light stays hid beneath a grid of bars weighted with gray

The sky, a hill of brumal fill and hiemal underlay

Low on the air a growling bear we cannot see but hear

Lumbers across an albatross of tempest-laden sphere

The woods, they say are lovelier in May, but oh, the hush

Where wanting wraps in white starlight each naked limb and bush

Defends its stance of storm-romance and brewing, brooding bliss

As budlets sleep beneath the keep of winter's wresting kiss

The brook sings in a storybook and slumbers in the dell

The hinterland a stifled strand where autumn’s glory fell

Prey to the ways of winter; every meadow is a wink

To lure the footloose wanderer out to the skyline’s brink

There is a wall between the call of firelight and white

The dreamer torn twixt cold and warm to vex his appetite

Where sky-hearths spill not flame but chill; still, something wild and sweet

Lures feet from chairs and slippers to tromp winter’s gilded street

We all are small beneath the rotund swath of cloth and hood

But we must see the majesty of snow parkas on wood

And we must touch and taste and feel Time’s steel-lipped offering

For soon the way of winter will fall prey to lays of spring

…and soon the lays of spring will melt apparel, svelte, ice-white

And soon the tune of May and June will spill in warm delight

And soon the bud will leap from mud and limb in green-frothed fray

Where night unfurled a white, white world, for this is winter’s way

© Janet Martin

…another holi-snowday!