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.

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 41 Number 6, on page 23
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