Page 21 - Contrast1975

WINTER THOUGHTS 19
-nancy k. barry
Thin air icing the pastures,
Brittle land cracking 'round
The burden of pregnant roots.
Ready, always ready for the
Birches to grow green again.
Earth, with open arms
Embraces all this death:
The leaves of lost breezes and
Golden, heart-red summers gone.

Along the wrinkled landscape a
Gout-ridden Maple claws the
Sky for heated breath. But
Clouds can not remember spring,
And so begin to snow their
White and loveless rage,
Reducing this trunk of life
To a withered grandmother,
With neither cane nor children,
Frozen forever, alone.

SPACES INBETWEEN

if i could but once

remember you,

that you you were (before becoming creeped

into our petty pace of

day to day

year to year
season ladled upon season

spiced with shattered

games and dreams)

and never know (forgetting all the
the you of now me of you the years

drained out from

under us)

for ever (a day i kissed
goodbye so long ago

and lost).

i'd laugh,

defying time

to take you from the
then of me;

but weep,
to think i'd never

see you grown. -i-nancy k. barry