Poems on Nature (unit project)

January Sky

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The sky hates winter just as much as I.

He, too, feels paler,

drowned,

as his color recedes

like a horizon hairline.

The wind keens and soughs against him,

through him,

and he stings with bitter blunted cold.

For all his sweet murmurings

into the ears of summer trees’ soft leaves,

he now feels sharply stabbed by barren branches;

as if they found him out,

his cheats,

with hill and rain and sun and stars.

And, as the moon is brightest now

since moisture sleeps inside the earth

and doesn’t fog or haze,

the sky feels blinded,

night and day.

Yes, the sky hates winter just as much as I.

We both can feel ourselves

sleeping behind the sun

and dreaming oceans,

closer to the clouds.

***

It Snowed Today

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The skin under my fingernails

is blue today. Sleeping,

like the hardened earth

beneath this blanket --

like the bears

under this hardened earth.

It took the shape of the grass,

long since withered and crisped

from the filmy touch of autumn,

and it filled the spaces

between the blades.

It clings to the feathered boughs

of evergreens, cloaking them

under the guise of everwhite.

And it shrouds the hills,

like a whisper-breath of wind

kissing the leaves of a beech,

or like a sliding seeping tongue of wave

covering the roughness of the sand.

The beauty of the earth fades in and out

as the snow melts and falls

and the clouds collect, descend,

disperse and soar.

The snow, the melt, the sun, the freeze:

in week-by-week rations.

Today is winter.

***

Sonnet for Winter Sunrise

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When Sun comes orange-flying from his sleep

and Moon slips palely past the russet hills,

the frosted headstones shed their nighttime chills

and Daylight sweetly through the grasses seeps;

Then, climbing nimbly, warm and morning-burned,

the Clouds are tumbled ruffled feathered smooth.

And Lake and Sky feel clean: no dirt, no grooves

to force their always-union to adjourn.

Though Trees are bare and skeletal in frame,

and Grass is dry and muffled under snow,

and Sun himself no warmth or comfort brings;

the Morning welcomes something of the spring,

and Sunrise calls the greening things to grow:

And we can hope for blessings of the same.