November 16: The Portents of a Winter Unseen

I am wistful of the green shade of sleeping branches,
Mourner to the russet tint of dry aged leaves.
Birds and small mammals have stripped the berried bushes
Cleaned like scoured bones of some animal remains.
Creatures wear the haggard mask of their hunger yet to come,
While sculpted mountains draw a charcoal line
Of thin smoky black across a distant horizon.
It draws a circle around our valley, like loving arms,

Not all life will be driven out, in the winter that is to come.
Just hold out,
There is power in the perseverance of things that grip onto life
With both hands and teeth and prehensile feet,
All throughout the death that winter will deliver.

In stillness, all things recall the source that animates them:
The squirreled seed,
The loitering bulb,
The sleeping skunk,
The stern blue color of river water as ice,

Even all the love that sleeps with one eye open
In the quiet hope, dormant in the deepest bear cave of my heart,
Just for you