Listen!
the cold, wet stars
are falling to fragment
in the grass.
Or is your silence not sharpened
Behind the lighted glass?
Midnight,
the veiling swings from
street lamp, so long as
wind should back
The dropping cloud of forecast winter,
To depth of season’s track.
No walk
on snow, on softened
surface; the old, creased
rock decays
By one more dampening of crevice,
Descent between two days.
Beauty
is bundled away
by shovel, consigned to
soil in street.
We must resetrict the place of snowflakes
With cinders under feet.
Winter
is old, a grey head
turning; and last white
star is spent.
My hill stands unfamiliar, shabby,
with drifts’ envelopment.