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
