Ice Age

Nov 1 2012

I awaken

to the first snow,

blanketing the world

in dawn's thin chill.

And by noon, is gone,

brown earth

and grass, like shrivelled straw

and ochre leaves

curling into fists,

all coolly glisten

in the long light

of fall.

And then, that night

a crisp frost,

sure to purify the soil.

Quarantine summer,

which has been over-run

with weeds and bugs

the teeming stuff

of warm black earth,

incubating microscopic life

and fat burrowing worms.

So the garden breathes

a grateful sigh,

and settles

into deep sanitized sleep. 

Which I, too, crave.

One day

it will stay,

undulating white, undisturbed.

Will soften the world,

cloak

its imperfection.

We will be 4 months

locked into winter,

its hard reflection

austere palette

of blue and pale.

And the feeling the cold

will keep descending,

this northern extremity

tip

into ice.

Next spring

a millennium away.