Written about the long winter of 2017 and 2018. Some is considered prose, some is poetry. Two in one!

☐

In this hard and chilled air of early spring,
Lies still the deep and thoughtful aura of Winter.
Crisp with snow and the changing Wind;
often they come and go, to stay and then to warm,
and to drop to zero below.

The towns want to thrive and yet are forced into a longer nap -
books lie open while those reading waits in a patient
but anxious thrill for the greener grass.
And the center stone memorial sits colored that of darkened blue summer sea sand. And outstretched was a gentle hand.

Snow turns to rain as he stands there—and back again it goes, appearing undone,
in a seemingly never-ending cycle under the warming April sun,
and the bright Passover moon.
We know in our hearts that the Cheyenne Star would come soon.
Although at its heart it may be orange and gold,
for now it could be felt as warm and brightly cold.

It is opposite of the wolf as it cries to the red-corn moon.
In the Fall and Summer, it may be—awakening the sunken reeds of their slumber and making them swoon.
In the Spring it makes the bird and deer sing to its yellow eye.
The sidewalks sit wounded from their long nap, where snow and ice were trapped beneath the lips of the lacerations that were stitched in the summer.

Reeds of gold and brown crackle in their melting beds,
their bodies brushing against each other, the snow once bending down their frayed heads.
Their voices are as if speaking from or within another point in time:
early October when Winter began its climb.

The ground longs for it to say goodbye.

Pale light falls upon the thick permafrost
where leaves rot with growing mold, and over the soft log, where warm does it become within its deep and thin caverns, lost.

It's as if the earth goes to sleep during this time of Snow and Rain.
Back and forth they go as they drip and droop unceasingly from the pine.
They droop and drip in a long patient waiting, their branches in a long relaxed strain.

And the bark of the feet at the trees is, with its weary battle, soft.
Worn from the cold hands of time and the spears each layer of the armed frozen flakes from the armies of snow had brought upon it.

☐

Fluid waits to come out of your pen in a patient eagerness!
If only we were more like it day by day, while the snow still hugs the landscape in its frozen caress.
This atmosphere is enough to make that black ink of a pen glow with an even more stark darkness,
as it stains the papers in a written description of words wrought from a single, isolated and alone one's mind.
If you look close enough, you may see a tiny cluster of suns or the moonlit glimmer of the shifting moon in the ebony blood's pigment and the book's bind.

Forests struggle to come alive with life,
and the deep magic which once beheld us long before is now buried deep in its
cavern, awaiting for the season to bestow upon us its warmth, and graceful presence, full of bounty and harvest, yet it is not the time for its sentence . . . Just yet.

Some fragments may linger in this coming time,
like some of the lines of my poem that do not rhyme.

☐

The winter stars were dulled of light with the clouds of blizzard and snow so white. Then they seemed to warm as time went on as did the navy sky,
loose instead of so tense and angered and strong.
Now large in the banking earth, ever so bright.

Rabbits bound over the logs and snow,
their brown fur matching with the thawing ground below.
Black eyes holding white points like the sky above,
they're just another joint in the glove.
The black stars amongst their fur, and the quietly violent habitat,
are just like those in the other world out there, hovering over like a large, warm hat.

When animals come out from caves thinking hibernation is over, only to find that it is, in their eyes, far from it,
grass struggles to poke through the white and wet blanket,
while trees stand relieved with the free and bouncing light of the resurrecting sun.
Far on the invisible horizon, there is a storm on the run.

Little did they know a fresh wave is on the way -
On the breaches of a soft and gentle rage does it sway.
But, perhaps they did and wished it willfully away.

So sit in our houses do we
as our weary and crisp eyes do see,
that another winter perhaps is coming —
neither can hear it rumbling.

Hungry skies are dulled with their meal of puffy white clouds,
and upon the mountains and wood, they shroud.
A flake falls and the silence becomes thicker in the pine,
after waiting and shivering in the leftover chill they cease from the wind and their whine.

Only to fall backward in time it seems
into another hibernation, as do the freezing streams.
They shudder and then finally slow.
No more does the water again flow.
With patient waiting their hope is not wasted,
for it is yet another change which they have become familiar with and have already tasted.

Just as they await the full change so must we.
As the air shifts back and forth, to Winter, do the days and the countryside take a knee.
Subduction once again from the world it will take on,
while the creatures who are no longer bare with the long and hot Summer, accept it with gritted teeth, and bear a wish for Spring to come upon.

Why can't we be more like them? Warm and content, despite the cold?
Upon the ground as we stand and bend like a stem, happy and awaiting the Spring in the shifting Winter fold.
We are like the creatures who despise but comply.
Not willing but with a peaceful, submissive will, already practiced and put to try.

Enjoy its magic for we get extra of Winter's snowfall!
A white warmth that lays back and yields . . .
And a along the poisoned, dead, brown ground does the new grass desperately try to creep, reaching out to Spring in a desperate call, only to be smothered by an accumulating paleness,
contrast to its past haleness.

Imagine and remember those days of warmth and golden sunlight
which played upon the Summer's green and fragrant grass that smelled so right.
But now let us be more like the wild, rather than the creatures, that willingly prepares itself and makes as much beauty and use of it as it possibly ever can and more.

Enjoy it rather than be so sore,
and fall into an incline to abhor.
Instead just fall into another world of yours,
whether imagined or real from your cores.
Fall in love and in step with the music this time and day bring you,
and soon you will begin to hear Spring's gentle coo.
Remember, this not only applies to Winter—
but personally, emotionally . . . life - wise, to you.
Be patient.