I was following the pack all swallowed in their coats, with scarves of red tied 'round their throats...

For years to come and others to go,
The world, twice a year, would become filtered by snow.
White with freezing frosty air and low, misty hanging clouds,
The earlier season still lingers—its taste in our mouths.

To keep their little heads from falling in the snow...

In the winter the earth rises and buries the warm late summer and
Autumn memories in a pure yet thin fluff,
Then perhaps later on drifts of cresting waves of white
Will weave and blow harshly on the lonely roads and bluffs.

✧

Can you hear the Red Winter Hymnal?
Singing on the wind by the dying colonel?
Even the brown, fuzzy-antlered stag and the red bird hear it,
As the lanterns and gun fuses struggle to stay lit.

Rain, sleet, and snow,
And I turn 'round and there you go.
From one season and back to another do we sway in a muddy, cold slew,
One old and another bright and new.

Not many leaves flutter in the breeze so shrill—
And skeletons of trees seem to stand in anxious waiting for the Arctic chill.
A few sharp, echoing cracks, and food had become not as low,
The putrid smell of gunsmoke lifting with the falling snow.

Much alike are the men who are dressed in white wraps and blue.
The moon follows them, shrouding the party in its quiet, gray hue.
The drums are beating in the distance like a thousand heavy hearts.
Silently do they march, dragging behind them their loaded carts.

And I turn 'round and there you go...

✧

Soldiers marched unknowingly where your path is laid
When an unkindly price was paid.
The clinging autumn's great change has now befallen the land,
Soon to be gone like wind in the sand.

Smoke and a hymnal or two drift in the air as you walk,
As you feel your fingers and toes beneath your
Knit wool mittens turn white like chalk.
It's like stepping back in time
Seeing and following the ghosts of red footprints
In the snow, which makes an invisible, thickly dotted line.

Patches of little crystals hang on to
Their branches, with leaves of red, brown, orange and yellow.
Everything is quiet, the air and wind so bitter cold and mellow.
Behind you does Winter follow,
The last days of color does he swallow.

You can taste the snow in the air,
So light and wondrously fair,
Yet we're still here buried by colors, the earth and
Leaves coated by a wet, rain-smelling mold,
And we sit here, praying for the ice,
The white veiled skies, and the cold.

✧

And Michael you will fall...

Red cheeks and a red nose,
Breath becomes mist—even your ears turn rose.
Frost on window screens, tiny flakes to large ones,
Sugaring the close-freezing crust in the night from green, gold and brown,
To a sheet of another color, fitted like a king's
sparkling, sapphire-jeweled crown.

Something teems beneath the earth.
An eternal sleep, but not always in lack of mirth.
Hard freezes are upon us now,
Breathing their discreet warnings upon our brow.

Fog forms on windows and cars,
But where is the layer of white, that covers the earth's still-bleeding scars?
Bleak and brown does it stay,
Where the snow is supposed to lay.

And turn the white snow red...

✧

The soldiers will soon come home to their wives,
As the shaded moonlight glints off muskets and bloodied knives.
Following each other like a pack of wolves as winter looms behind—
But it's already upon them, a thin frost no one can yet find.

The drummer and the flute, on they play.
The repeating song a warning echo for those standing in
The woods, or those in the gathering drifts where they lay.
A family of five listen, dressed in robes and stocking caps,
Awoken suddenly from their brief winter naps.

✧

The Indian Summer is soon over now,
And the farmer's put away his plow.
Still the Natives dance among the wilderness and bushes,
Along the leaves do their moccasins make quiet hushes.

They pull on their furs and smoke the meat;
Some only have a horse as their seat.
Warriors of the winter, gentle as deer,
Arrows and knives so sharp and mere.

...as strawberries in the summertime.

✧

The fox may stay awake as will the deer.
Fall is leaning out of the way for winter is so near—
It's crisp on the pine needles and bark,
And soft it sings does the fleeing meadowlark.

Rivers still run between the cracks and under floating
Sheets of ice, humming with a hidden song as the
Ripples and currents dance beneath our feet,
The banks and brown mud dripping with icy cold sleet.
Mists form above our sheds,
In the mountains and over their bald, gray heads.

A feeling of warmth filters through all that chill—
Visions of shadowy memories and thoughts so still.
Words of love descend as do those of a once long forgotten poem,
Sometimes only the wilderness seems to know them.

✧

Can you hear the Red Winter Hymnal?
Once sung by the dying colonel?
It still runs in the veins of the black trees
And the rolling hills of the empty gray fields and through our knees.

Cold is in the air
In which we all share
As all things, even emotion, are brought to a minimal
When we sing the Red Winter Hymnal.

The End
(Until it comes again)