lines written in late winter

Midnight’s icy tears so moved the light

to sheath the trees inside a jewel.

Then to the mid-day sun’s delight

a willow wept in diamonds.

Beneath, a pond was melt along the brim.

Over shrinking glaze of snow and glass

the willow leaned as though to gaze 

upon her glimmer’s loveliness.

She wept a beauty queen’s surprise

or perhaps a queen become too soon,

coronated in resplendent light and

a sky’s unthinkable, unthinking blue.

Trembling in the wind she cried,

giving winter’s wealth away 

which melts awash in blinking eyes

of a thousand tiny suns.

To Laura McNeel, who has known the winter of our discontent and plants the seeds of spring.