Remembrance
What I remember
Is—dusk or dawn
Of some December
That’s now long gone,
Snow thick, and flurries
Wafting, wind-whirled,
The sole stirring that worries
The woods’ dead world,
Their Anglo-Saxon
Wrought-iron dark—
That trickster-vixen:
Ghostblaze, her spark
From a thicket’s runes rushing
Like wildfire ignites
The icescape and flushing
Shadowbirds lights
That charcoal sketch
Of life aglow;
Peach suntints catch
Flame in the snow,
Green chant the pines,
Then all is lost
But dark tracks, hollowed signs,
Their quick gleaming with frost.
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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 41 Number 6 , on page 23
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