The Fiddler of Driskill Hill: Poems

In Winter Prime

 In Winter Prime Near Lent the winter deepens toward its noon When sun-flakes twinkle keen in snow and grass And stars beyond the stardust of the moon Pass on within a dark that cannot pass. Yet even then may come a milder time When ice sweats cold gold beads that swell and run, Their melting felt in earth as early prime, Some subtle fluctuation of the sun. And in that radiant glade where warm light glows A yellow dandelion and butterfly Wake to a false brief spring that comes and goes Between long afternoons of frosted sky. Such blooms and wings soon stiffen in the dusk Of matter’s endless winters that still hold Each fall and spring, each summer’s greenest husk, All caught in plots that plot a tale untold. ...