Here Is My Feast Of Crystal splendor
Now the landscape is still.
Grasses are stiff, rimed with frost.
Bare trees sleep,
dreaming of warmth as yet distant.
But a new beauty imbues their branches
their essential selves emerge
in a pattern of graceful tracery
against the winter sky.
I am become ice
caressing the garden with my cold kisses,
taming wavelets to stillness.
Here is my feast of crystal splendor
displayed in masses of diamonds
that sparkle everywhere to see.
How beautiful I am, and how pristine.
Relish my beauty, but do not touch me
lest you suffer from the frost.
I magnify the light,
extending its power to dazzle the eye.
Soft snow shrouds me in a white fur cloak,
muffling sound, softening hard edges.
But I crack branches,
scour stones, and buffet cliffs.
Locked out of life I pry at openings to get
in.
I am envious of warmth,
and will not melt before my time,
nor give way when the light begins to
lengthen.
Some call me cruel, others kind,
knowing that
all life needs to sleep,
that old forms crumble to make way for new.
But
light persists. At last I soften in the warmth,
beguiled,
I loosen my clasp until
irresistibly compelled I yield myself at
last
to Spring's embrace and fall asleep
to drowse the warm away,
knowing that I will wake again one day.
Tasha Halpert
No comments:
Post a Comment