Hath Winter Then a Heart of Tenderness and Winter Returns (oldies revisited)

Happy First Day of Winter, Everyone! 

Hath winter then a heart of tenderness

For landscapes clad in rags of brown and gray?

Where farewell and arrival coalesce

Winter spills forth as autumn slips away

She touches with redemption-tinted garb

The stricken aftermath of summer cheer

Her sugar-coated kisses soothe the yard

Where yesterday it suffered autumn’s tear

And where the wanton field lay naked, bare

She wreaths its frond and furrow with the gleam

Of diamonds fit to garnish angel’s hair

Tucking to earth the farmer’s finished dream

Granting a gilded respite to his care

  Spilling from sky a snowflake-choir requiem

***

Tis right to entertain both joy and grief

This season; the portent of hope and fear

Where we embark anew, the shoal, the sheaf

Of garnered days melded to bygone year

Like gathered harvest, seed then deed is wrought

Preserved beyond the elements of time

Its echoes tune the pastures of our thought

Where longing and fulfillment toll their chime

And now a gracious sheath of purity

Embellishes the dull and stricken plain

A mother with compassion’s sympathy

Blankets the grim reminders of our pain

Drawing our eyes to present mystery

History sleeps; to linger there is vain

***

Hath winter then a heart of tenderness?

White snow covers a year of scarlet tears

The barren bough reaches for her caress

The heart reaches beyond past hurt and fears

To offerings of hope and happiness

Unblemished; yet again a gift of grace

Ignores our monuments of selfishness

Where we have scathed and scarred her virgin face

With sordid sins of foolish fantasies

Time’s vault will not exhume our leaps of woe

But gently leads us from these agonies

Across a threshold unmarred as fresh snow

Granting to us but this; our memories

 To keep the good then let the remnant go  

Janet Martin~ 

Winter wanders in

wearing a white bridal gown

earth carries her veil

Winter Poem for the Child in Us...

 
Reluctant, defeated, autumn succumbs
To winter’s purposed and powerful grip
Stealthily sleek, silver silencing numbs
The ends of our noses and fingertips
Harshly the wind rakes its talons of steel
Over the cusp of the leafy-fringed ponds
Somewhere up yonder it touches a wheel
Showering the earth with quadrillion diamonds
Winter ah, winter, the predisposed foe
Open your pockets and bring on the snow

Pull out your mittens and dust off your sled
Bundle your babies in jackets of fleece
Starry-eyed children with cheeks painted red
Shrieking and rolling in winter’s release
Frosty the snowman returns to his post
Corn pipe and blue scarf to ward off the chill
Miniature angels in unnumbered hosts
Cover the rooftop and valley and hill
Tumbling and twirling and spiraling down
Winter returns in her star-studded gown


Spring, summer, autumn, green, azure and gold
Planting and pruning and gathering in
Winter is white bringing with the sharp cold
A season of rest and of quieting
Gather your loved ones around the warm hearth
Kinder is love when the fretting winds blow
Winter is keeping the seed in the earth
Tucking its bed with a blanket of snow
Its days are as numbered as all other things
Winter; the glorious harbinger of spring

Janet Martin