Winter Regions

Winter Regions

Frigid, still as a grandfather’s funeral
The winter regions, the light
Settling and unsettling. Snowcaps
Extended wide over the hills, drape
Settled and unsettled in white sheets:
The sky a short mourning, the mourning
A sky, its time lucid and silent
As crystal, glaciers, blue gel.

As if heaven spoke in tongues.

And the whole earth draped sacred
In sheets and crystal, the still earth never
And always virginal and day erupts
Into the first day, dropped
Patches of first snow over
The wide hills. It was
Both sky and mourning, and the sky
Was shrill and ubiquitous, like trumpets.