That Is Not Spring

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Two more poems of my own (in honor of the Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading), focusing on the realities of early February here in Western Pennsylvania, where this morning I walked to work past ice-coated and bare, unbudded tree limbs while the local woods hunches down, suspicious of the wind, and shrugs up its only shabby coat of dead, colorless leaves... The days are longer, the lights are lit--but we still have a ways to go.

Unweathered Song

What rock could withstand such air,
the diamond cut and cold of snow on stone?
Yet nestled here and there,
the chickadees note dawn in beak and bone.



Snowfall Warmed in Afternoon Sunlight

Hung muted faery tongues upon the wind,
muscles freed from voice and sense to dance
an unmeasured tune like bells, white glinting bells
strung silent as on unseen strings and tell
the flexing air of winter's long-invisible expanse,
of night, of creaking ponds of ice, and of its end.