That Winter
That winter when the night sky was violet, I was sure I would remember it,
and the sight of unbroken snow in the morning, I would remember that too,
and the cat waiting on the step to be let in,
and on clear nights the evening star just over the hemlocks,
and the tree in the young couple’s window lit long after Christmas.
I was sure I would remember those starry white lights,
and the couple’s windows and tree going dark at their bedtime,
while I read by the light of a single lamp.
* * * * *
Unshed Tears and the Snow
When I hear great Callas sing
Nell’ora del dolor,
In my hour of sorrow,
heat breaks the dam in my chest
and tears seem to well but don’t
come no matter how much they
tease at the back of my throat.
Then later at the window,
the curtain pushed aside,
I see the street turned white,
and the trees and roofs, and path.
As I kept longing for tears,
snow fell from a windless sky
and night came on with no sound.
* * * * *
Do You Dare?
It snows on the leaf, on the branch on the rose,
on marigolds, shriveled as they are.
It snows on the threshold, on the window, snow clumped like cotton.
Snow drifts on the street, on the road, deep on the curb strips,
greenish whirlpools of snow under the streetlights,
white on the dome of the Greek Church across the way.
It snows on the gravestones, on the evil and the good.
In the garden, on the statue, the Buddha’s lips sealed in ice.
And cracks between flagstones obliterated, the ground all one thing.
Do you dare call it unity, cold grace, white communion, blessed silence?
Then wind carves the drifts so at the foundation of the house
there’s snowless space and a white crest like the crest of a wave.