The Road to the Spring: Collected Poems of Mary Austin

Cold Spell

337 Cold Spell Flat lands of Kansas, undulant, snow sleeked hollows endlessly bared to the cold’s enchantment. The sky is covered with feathers as of broody wood-pigeons. Down, sifting over the plate round pools and candid, low-marged rivers, Weights down the sedges; where now no mallard cries, nor teal nor widgeon. The steers in the feeding yards mill with insistent maimed instincts of flight; In the wood lot, the rabbit lopes forlornly. The days are under a spell; the mornings blink with red lidded eyes, and the evenings fall like dead birds from a wounded wood-pigeon sky; At midnight, the snuffling wind pack of the wide-seeking Witch Cold hunts and devours them. At mid-day only the lit hearths of the homesteads hold mindlessly out against the cold’s enchantment. Editor’s Notes Harp, January–February 1931, 1. ...