Only in winter

 

"There is a privacy about winter which no other season gives you … Only in winter…can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself."

-  Ruth Stout,  How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back

 

 

The Freedom of the Moon

by Robert Frost

I've tried the new moon tilted in the air

Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster

As you might try a jewel in your hair.

I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster,

Alone, or in one ornament combining

With one first-water start almost shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.

By walking slowly on some evening later,

I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,

And brought it over glossy water, greater,

And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,

The colour run, all sorts of wonder follow.

 

The Dream of February

BY JOHN HAINES

 

         I

In the moonlight,

in the heavy snow,

I was hunting along

the sunken road

and heard behind me

the quiet step

and smothered whimper

of something following . . .

 

Ah, tree of panic

I climbed

to escape the night,

as the furry body glided

beneath, lynx with  

steady gaze, and began

the slow ascent.

 

         II

And dark blue foxes

climbed beside me with

famished eyes that  

glowed in the shadows;

 

I stabbed with

a sharpened stick until

one lay across

the path with entrails

spilled, and

the others melted away.

 

The dead fox

moved again, his jaws

released the

sound of speech.

 

         III

Slowly I toiled

up the rotting stairs

to the cemetery

where my mother lay buried,

 

to find the open grave

with the coffin

tilted beside it,

and something spilled

from the bottom—

 

a whiteness that flowed

on the ground

and froze into mist that

enveloped the world.

“The Dream of February.” Copyright © 1993 by John Haines. Reprinted from The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Source: The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1993)